I hope the folks who are looking into steroid abuse in pro sports don’t get wind of what’s happening in the little town of Stephenville; if they do, they’ll probably want the entire town to pee into a jar.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ll tell you. An article in the paper the other day reported that some people in this central Texas town have seen a flying saucer – or a flying something-or-other. They claim to have seen a huge, silent object -- complete with bright lights – flying low and fast over the countryside. Some have even reported seeing fighter jets chasing it.

See what I’m saying?

The deal is, though, these folks aren’t obvious wackos. We’re not talking about an old woman who lives in a trailer with 27 cats and keeps her windows covered with aluminum foil so the government can’t read her mind though the TV. The saucer spotters include a pilot, a county constable and a handful of business owners.

Federal officials insist there's a logical explanation for the sightings. Of course, federal officials always insist there’s a logical explanation for UFO sightings. A spokesman from the Naval Air Station in Fort Worth said there were no fighter jets from his base in the area the night of Jan. 8, when most people reported seeing the thing. You will note that he did not mention mile-long flying objects covered in colored lights. Coincidence? Oh, sure.

"I'm 90 percent sure this was an airliner," he said. “Lights from the aircraft would seem unusually bright and may appear orange from the setting sun. With the sun's angle, it can play tricks on you." Right – the sun’s angle convinced more than a dozen people all across the county that they saw the same enormous object, covered with disco lights, hovering in the air. An honest mistake – happens to me all the time.

The locals who saw it aren’t buying the airliner dodge. They say the thing they saw was larger, quieter, faster and lower to the ground than an airplane – in other words, like a Hummer, only smaller. They also said the object's lights changed configuration, unlike those of a plane. Additionally, people in surrounding towns who reported seeing it over the course of several weeks have offered similar descriptions. That’s one hell of an optical illusion, you ask me.



A local machinist said his friends made fun of him when he told them he saw a flat, metallic object hovering about 300 feet over a pasture behind his Dublin home. But after reading similar accounts in the local newspaper, he decided to tell his story.

"You hear about big bass or big buck in the area, but this is a different deal," he said. Of course, while you may indeed hear about big bass or big buck in the area, you seldom hear about one festooned with lights and flying through the air, scaring the bejeezus out of people.