Gary and the Rutabaga Garden

A young boy named Gary lived near the airport, and from the steps on his back porch he could always see the planes coming and going.  When the planes flew overhead, the wind would pick up and Gary's brown curly hair would flap in the wind and fly in front of his eyes.  To keep his eyes on the plane, Gary liked to wear a yellow headband with his name written across the front.

On most days he saw the big 747s and 777s blazing thick white trails through the open skies.  If he was lucky, Gary would spot his favorite plane, the Twin Otter, flying low over the nearby corn fields.  He always said that if he could fly any plane, it would be the Twin Otter.  He liked how it could quickly ascend and descend, and with his hands Gary would imitate the Twin Otter diving and swooping like birds snatching fish from the sea.

One day Gary was in his usual perch, gazing up at the sky when something strange caught his eye.  As a 747 passed overhead, Gary tilted his head back to see the belly of the plane and he could have sworn he saw something attached to the belly of that plane.  Not wheels or stripes or landing gear or anything he normally saw but some THING, a thing with long hairy arms outstretched, clinging to the bottom of the plane.  That thing, whatever it was, had something red on its back, a little red bag or maybe a cape like the kind that superheroes wore. Gary really could not be sure what it was but he needed to tell someone right away.

"MOM!" yelled Gary, running from the porch through the back door and into the kitchen. 

Gary's mom was there in the kitchen slicing and dicing rutabagas she had picked from the family garden.  She stopped her slicing immediately when she saw Gary rush through the door, his brown curls bouncing along above his yellow headband.  

"What is it Gary?  What'd you see out there?" she asked.

"I saw a . . . a .... " Gary was breathing hard.  He slowed down to catch his breath.  Finally he said, "A thing!  A thing on the bottom of the plane, Mom!"  

"What do you mean 'a thing' You mean the wheels, Gary?"  

"No, not the wheels!  Something with arms and legs and a red backpack or a cape, Mom!"

"Well that sounds very strange, Gary," his mom said as she sat down at the kitchen table.  "Very strange indeed."  


But Gary's mom had no doubt that Gary was telling the truth as Gary rarely told lies or even exaggerated.  And Gary's mom had another reason to believe Gary:  just a few days earlier she had seen the very same thing while she was out planting rutabagas in the vegetable garden.  And that was not the first time she had seen it.  In fact, every day that she tended to her rutabagas she noticed that suspicious hairy creature on the bottom of a big plane.  She thought it was odd to see those long hairy arms and legs stretched across the belly of the plane but she had managed to convince herself that she had only imagined it.  Now, she knew it must be real.  They had both seen it.  

By now Gary had caught his breath and was looking up at his mom, waiting for her to snap out of the long spell of silence.  

Finally she spoke.  "Gary," she said, "grab three of the freshest rutabagas from the garden, the purplest ones you can find, and follow me. We've got to find that THING."