Farmer Finds UFO in Iowa Cornfield

Duane Anderson, owner of the 200-acre farm on Sullivan Road, needed to get out of the house. It was a day of unique promise that was slipping from his grip under the influence of the TV screen. Frannie, his wife, was already installed on the sofa, a cup of coffee in one hand and a pop tart on her lap, watching the early morning talk shows. The Doctor wanted her to get more exercise, get outdoors, get the circulation back into her legs. What to do? What to do?

“I'm gonna check on the corn”, said Duane, “I’ll be back soon. Perhaps we can run into town?”, he added, hopefully.

Frannie wasn’t listening to him. She was someplace else in someone else’s idea of America, which is where he left her.

About a hundred yards from the farmhouse, Duane was inspecting a patch of leaf blight, enjoying the peaceful morning calm, when he was distracted by a sharp glint of light in the big blue Iowa sky. He looked up and watched with fascination as a silver object descended to earth, spinning slowly on a vertical axis. It landed softly and silently just beyond the corn rows, in a fallow field, not more than fifty feet from him. It took a moment for this reality to sink in.  

His heart ran fast, his breathing quickened, and next thing he was stumbling arthritically through the corn and toward the landing site, drawn to the object as if by a greater power. 

It was a smooth-sided quicksilver cube, with a rounded translucent portal or window on one side, and it started buzzing like a disturbed wasps’ nest, the noise intensifying as he got closer and closer. He backed off, hurried back to the house, his mind scrambling madly to make sense of things, until it settled involuntarily on an imagined headline: “Farmer Finds UFO in Iowa Cornfield”. Duane sensed that his date with destiny had arrived.

Duane hit the off switch on the TV remote, and Frannie looked like she was about to throw a fit. He held his hands up in surrender, a big grin on his face.

“You’ve gotta come look at this!”, he exclaimed, waving at her to follow him, “You’re not gonna believe what just happened!”.

Nothing much out of the ordinary happens on a corn farm in Iowa, so Frannie was a bit surprised at first. Then she had a reflective moment, when she realized that she was surprised that she was surprised, and she abandoned the living room, the sofa, the TV world, and wobbled after Duane as fast as her diabetic 60-year-old body would allow.  

“It’s a spaceship!”, he shouted back at Frannie over his shoulder, stumbling on toward the cornfields.

Out of breath, she slowed down a bit and wondered whether he was still taking his meds.

Duane slowed down too. His knees felt like glass.

“Supreme, we fucking made it!”, said the First-and-Only Officer, decommissioning the small-bang thruster and activating the communications systems, “I present to you… the BLUE PLANET! TA DA!”. The First-and-Only swung around and faced the Supreme, a shit-eating grin on his face.

The Supreme Commander was growing irritated by the First-and-Only, his constant and only companion across seven thousand light-years of the universe. He was also disappointed by the arid and featureless expanse outside the window. “I thought it was supposed to be covered in water?”, said the Supreme petulantly.

“Let’s celebrate!” said the First-and-Only, grabbing a small capsule of fruity-flavored fungus extract.

“Let’s not”, said the Supreme, surly, looking at the First-and-Only with disgust. Not for the first time, he wished he’d abandoned F&O at a planet near the black-hole swing-by.

“It’s not very big”, said Frannie, skeptically staring at a silvery object the size of a toaster-oven, “what makes you think it’s a spaceship?”

“It came out of the sky, very, very slowly”, said Duane, pointing up at a particular spot in the great expanse of blue, establishing the toaster’s precise provenance.

Frannie waddled up to the object. She was panting still. 

“Be careful. It might be delicate” said Duane, then a darker thought crossed his mind, “also it might be dangerous?” he added.

The buzzing noise got louder but Frannie ignored it or couldn’t hear it. She touched the silver cube lightly, tapped it gently, just in case the darn-fool no-good husband was right. Nothing. She carefully picked it up, turned it on its side, and inspected the oblong portal. Duane edged over to her side.

She shook it a bit and felt the liquid contents swishing around inside; it was filled with an algae-green gloopy soup.  

“Look! Look! There’s a sea monkey!”, said Duane, jabbing at the glass-covered aperture, thrilled.

“Yuck!” said Frannie, dropping the cube on the ground, “looked more like a big old tadpole to me!”

“I’m gonna call the police”, said Duane, “who gamboled off toward the house.

“I dunno Duane”, called Frannie, “Could be asking for trouble”. She looked around for somewhere to sit. “Bring something for me to sit on”.

“What the fuck!” said the Supreme.

“They’re gigantic” screamed the First-and-Only as he watched the monstrous bipod approach the ship.

The monstrous bipod abruptly smashed the side of the vessel sending shockwaves through the life-support plasma.

“Whoa!” cried the Supreme, as the monster lifted the vessel aloft.  The Supreme Commander and his First-and-Only were violently thrown back and forth. 

A huge eye-like thing loomed into view, and a massive pink appendage slammed against the window. Two monsters, one roared and the vessel tumbled down onto the surface of the planet with a great crash, landing skew-whiff, knocking both the F&O and the Supreme unconscious.

Molly Dupree, a Dubuque County Deputy Sherrif was parked outside the National Farm Toy Museum in Dyersville, monitoring traffic at the intersection of 9^th street and Route 20, when she received a call from dispatch, directing her to investigate a disturbance at a farm on Sullivan Road. Bored of handing out speeding tickets, she hit the gas and made it out to the Anderson farm in minutes. 

Two old people, a leather-necked farmer and his pink-faced wife, were sitting comfortably in the slightly raised dirt bucket of a John Deere tractor on a field about a hundred yards from the farmhouse, drinking soda and munching on snacks. She jogged on over. 

“I thought it was a balloon… one of those Chinese spy balloons”, said Duane, pointing at a particular spot in the Iowan heavens, “kinda slow, then it just plonked down here in this here field. Didn’t even make a sound”. 

“Could you see some kind of… propulsion?” asked Deputy Molly, down on her haunches, shading her eyes so she could get a good look inside the thing.

“Nope!”, said Duane, “It fell out of the sky like an angel”.

Frannie rolled her eyes; he was always a bit soft in the head. Soft and sentimental.

“It’s not very big, is it?” said Deputy Molly, unsure of what to do next. 

Frannie had her arms crossed and was grim-faced, “can’t we just keep it? Or donate it to the toy museum?”, she suggested.

“I’ll make some calls from the station”, said Deputy Molly, who jogged back to her police cruiser.

When Deputy Molly got back to the station, she called the FBI field office in Omaha, Nebraska, and got through to Agent Ford Simmons Junior, who sounded very bored, ready for the weekend. Agent Simmons asked Deputy Molly to repeat what she had said.   

“Alien spaceship. Spotted. Farm near Dyersville”, said the Agent slowly, echoing select words on the other end of the call, audibly scratching down notes on a writing pad.

“Not just spotted!”, corrected Deputy Molly, she sensed that Agent Simmons was jerking her around.

The FBI man angrily scratched out the first version of his transcript, “Not spotted”, said Agent Simmons, emphatically. He paused and seemed to choke on his words a bit “Was it smooth? Like an eight-ball?”, he asked, then trailed off in a coughing fit that sounded suspiciously like a suppressed laugh.

Deputy Molly waited for him to calm down, “very funny” she said.

“How big is it?”, asked Agent Simmons.

Deputy Molly hesitated for a moment, “About the size of a toaster oven”, she said, reluctantly.

“Toaster oven”, said Agent Simmons very slowly, writing the words in capital letters on his pad, “any particular model and make?”

Deputy Molly hung up on what sounded like an ape laughing.

“Supreme! My Supreme! Wake up!” shouted the First-and-Only, shaking his comrade.

The Supreme slowly returned to consciousness.

 The ship was a mess, provisions were floating around in the plasma, and it was hot, too hot.  Light and heat from the nearby star was flooding through the window which was oriented toward the sky. On-board living conditions were turning dangerous.

Deputy Molly dialed the Governer’s office where she got through to a summer intern who redirected her to the Public Safety team, who redirected her to a recorded message detailing how to respond to a fentanyl overdose. She hung up again.

She called the National Guard in Cedar Falls, and got through to Mav Manners, a Major in the Army Reserve. After a brief preamble, she got to the point.

“A UFO you say!”, said Major Manners, suddenly very attentive.

“Yes! A Farm on Sullivan Road, just outside Farley, near Dyersville”, said Deputy Molly, relieved to have garnered some attention to the cause.

“Dyersville, you say!” said Major Manners excitedly, “Can you give me a brief description of said UFO?

Deputy Molly presented the Major with the vaguest of impressions, omitting to mention its size.

A silver spaceship, you say!”, said Major Manners.

Deputy Molly was starting to get irritated with the man.

“We’ll be there late afternoon!”, said Major Manners, who then ended the call. He turned to the framed photo of the U.S. President on the wall of this office.  “Cometh the hour, cometh the man!”, he solemnly pledged, hand on heart.

The Supreme instructed the First-and-Only to activate BB201, the emergency launch package. 

“Sir, there will be collateral damage!”, said the First-and-Only.

“I don’t give a fuck”, said the Supreme. “This place cannot support intelligent life, and these animals are evil behemoths”.

First-and-Only recalled with remorse how the last BB explosion had gone awry, wiped out half a galaxy, including a handful of inhabited planets, just like this one. With a heavy sigh, he loaded the activated Big Bang 201 explosive devise into the launch duct and offered up a private prayer.

The Iowa National Guard unit arrived at the farm. Two vehicles: an Oshkosh L-ATV M1278 Heavy Guns carrier equipped with a M153 CROWS II remote weapon and an M2 Browning .50 caliber heavy machine gun, and an up-armored M1151 Enhanced Armament Carrier. Major Manners jumped out, excited, followed by a handful of heavily armed soldiers, less excited. A policewoman was waiting for them.

“I am Deputy Dupree, sir”, said Molly, greeting the military phalanx, nervously.

“Deputy Dupree, you say!”.

Deputy Molly was a bit disappointed by this small, officious man with the toothbrush moustache, and his annoying verbal tics, and wondered whether she’d made the right call.

“Show us the way!”, said Major Manners for whom every sentence was short and seemed to end with an exclamation mark.

Deputy Molly guided the Major and his troops toward the cornfield where Duane and Frannie were seated side by side on the improvised bucket seat. They were holding hands and chatting, but they fell silent when the military men arrived, unclasped their hands. 

“It’s not very big”, said Major Manners, disappointed. The exclamation marks vanished from his locution, “it looks like a small washing machine”. 

"Or a toaster-oven?", suggested Deputy Molly.

Major Manners turned to face Farmer Peterson, “You say it came out of the sky?”,

With uncanny accuracy, Duane pointed at the same particular spot in the sky, “At first, I thought it was a spy balloon”, he said, “or an angel”.  Frannie rolled her eyes again.

“An Angel you say”, said Major Manners, distracted. He dropped to his haunches, to get a better look inside the vessel, “It looks like spinach soup inside,” said the Major.

“With sea monkeys”, said Duane a bit unhappily.

“Or tadpoles”, added Frannie.

Major Manners stood up, clasped his hands behind his back and stuck out his chest. 

“Operation...”, he paused for dramatic effect, "Operation Angel of Death", he declared, which caused more than a few nervous glances back and forth among the small audience. 

He looked sternly at the small washing machine or toaster oven, then at Deputy Molly, then at the Andersons, then at his troops, perceptibly reinvigorated, exclamation marks reinstated.  

"Men! To Arms!".

“Supreme Commander, Big Bang 201 is armed and ready for detonation”, said the First-and-Only Officer. “Coordinates are set. We are programmed to outrun the blast, but it will be bumpy for the first couple of light years”.

“What is your assessment of the collateral damage?”, asked the Supreme

“Total destruction of this solar system”, said the First-and-Only, applying a firm grip on the control panel.

The Supreme solemnly evaluated his options, then said, “First-and-Only, on my command…”.

Major Manners and his men advanced upon the toaster oven; weapons drawn. Deputy Molly was whispering something into her walkie-talkie, a worried frown upon her face. The afternoon sun was setting, and a breeze was rippling through the corn rows, backlit flecks of dust and loose strands of corn silk were wafting to and fro in the warm air.

“How about we sit out here and watch the stars, tonight?” said Duane, leaning into Frannie, “We haven’t done that in….”.

“Forever!” said Frannie, squeezing his hand.