“In a hole in the ground there lived a…”
On the cloudless night of August the 28th, 1994, in Owego, New York, something fell from the sky into the Aiellos’ backyard with a loud whirring and a bang. The six people in the household–most of them children–rushed to their windows to see what was the matter, and when the dust settled all they saw was a hole in the grass the size of a large can of peeled tomatoes.
Despite their father’s insistence not to go outside, the four Aiello children rushed out with their dog as soon as he got on the phone with the police. They all took turns reaching into the hole, but it went too far down to reach the bottom, even for Christine the eldest. They tried everything they could find–lacrosse sticks, jumprope, all their winter scarves tied together–but none of them got even close to hitting the bottom of this new hole. They were about to add their parents’ scarves to the mix when the police arrived on the scene, an entourage that included the Owego police chief and two New York State Troopers.
The children were sent back to their rooms, where they watched from the windows as the cops tried all the same things they’d done, just with fancier equipment. They got the same result, too: nothing. They shared a giggle when one of the officers got down on all fours and shouted into the hole, “Hello? Anyone in there?”
They stopped laughing when they heard it, clear as day, coming from the hole: “Hello? Hello?”
The backyard went silent. No police radio chatter, no cicadas, no breathing, as everybody waited and hoped desperately they wouldn’t hear that again.
“Hello? Hello?”
“By god,” muttered Police Chief Jeffries. “There’s something down there.” The men in the yard stared at each other, each one at a loss for what to do next. Jeffries finally shook himself out of it and radioed for a digging crew.
“Are you crazy?” yelled Mr. Aiello. “You can’t go digging up my land for this!”
“There is someone down there,” Jeffries said.
“And how did he get down there?” asked Mr. Aiello. “Nobody big enough to talk could fit down that hole.”
He was right. Even a toddler was bigger than a large can of peeled tomatoes. The cops all stared at the hole again, mouths agape.
“Could be an alien!” called Michael, the middle child, from the upstairs window.
“That’s very true!” said Chief Jeffries, who never imagined himself saying this before. But he had to, if only to maintain control over the situation. “It could be an alien.”
“Hello? Hello?” came the voice from the hole.
Mr. Aiello shut his eyes and rubbed his temples. He’d just redone the whole yard, landscaped it himself. All four kids had helped, even if that help was sometimes more of a hindrance. It had cost a fortune, too, and he had known going in that it was going to be his last big purchase for a while, with Christine four years away from college.
“C’mon, Dad!” shouted Joey, the other middle child. “What if it’s an alien? I want to meet him!”
“Or her,” corrected Rosie, the youngest. “She could be a lady alien.”
“You’re outnumbered,” said Officer Jeffries with a grin. “We’re digging this thing out.”
By the time the digging crew arrived, the children could no longer be contained in the house. Mrs. Aiello had made lemonade and passed it out to the kids and the cops and the neighbors who had come to see what was happening. The children took turns calling “Hello! Hello!” into the hole and enjoyed the response, which never changed.
They stuck a drill into the hole. The machine whirred to life and all the kids smacked their hands to their ears to drown out the noise. The drill ripped and tore through the dirt for thirty seconds before they laid off the button. The ground began to shake, and the voice called out again.
“Knock it off! That’s mine! That’s mine!”
“It’s his hole,” Joey said somberly. “Maybe we shouldn’t have dug.”
“Nonsense,” said Mr. Aiello. “His hole is on our property. If anything, it’s my hole.”
“That’s mine!” called the voice from the hole. “That’s mine!”
“Keep going,” called Mr. Aiello to the diggers. “We earthlings have got to teach this alien a lesson about private property.”
Reluctantly, the digger laid into the drill again. This time, the earth below began to quiver and shake, but not in the way gravity would dictate the drill should make it quiver and shake. Something was wrong. He laid off the drill again.
“I said keep going!” shouted Mr. Aiello. But the ground shook so much that he couldn’t stay standing. Everyone leapt to find something to grab onto as a rumbling came underneath them, and then a whirring. Instinctively the cops all pointed their guns at the hole in the ground.
The ground burst open, kicking up more dirt and sand and dust along with it. The earthlings all hacked and coughed and sputtered, some waving their hands in front of their faces.
“Hello! Hello!”
Rosie was the first to see it. “There she is!” she called, pointing. “The alien!”
Everyone followed her tiny finger to the nearest tree. There, illuminated by the moon and the streetlamp and the police light signals alternating blue and red, perched the alien: gray, feathered, with striking yellow eyes, its beak curved into a snarl. On the ground beneath the tree was a battery-powered electric drill.
Officer Jeffries took a step towards the drill, but the creature snapped, “That’s mine! That’s mine!”
Then the African Grey Parrot swooped down from its place in the tree, snatched up the drill, and took off into the night sky.
More like this , please.