Twelve Impossible Things Before Breakfast by Jane Yolen Page B

one had gotten close enough yet to deal with them directly, since they just ate and ran, leaving behind only their signature odor as a kind of calling card.
    So the sheriff suggested everyone in town move into shelters until the invasion was over. “Until they move to Greener Pastures,” is what Sheriff Cooper actually said. Greener Pastures was a town in the next county. It was an old joke, only nobody was laughing.
    No one could figure out how the aliens went from one place to another, either. For example, one minute they would all be at the town dump, digesting seagulls; the next in the backyard of Dr. Foster’s kennels, munching on guinea pigs and poodles. Each time the state police arrived, the aliens were already gone somewhere else, eating their way through a herd of Holsteins or an entire Morgan horse farm. In a rural county like ours, the police couldn’t possibly stake out all of the animals. And everyone who had been near the aliens was too frightened to describe them accurately, except for the smell. And of course now that they had been seen, everyone knew they were aliens. The sheriff called for the National Guard.
    One farmer had tried unloading a shotgun into the green alien from about thirty paces when it ate his goat herd. The shot bounced off the alien’s body, but the fanner got the alien’s attention, all right, which was not exactly what he was going for. When the Guard got there, he was in his car, the doors locked tight, babbling into his CB radio, calling for a stealth bornber and otherwise making no sense whatever. There was an odd slime on the outside door handle of the car and the burnt egg-hockey socks smell was everywhere. Five biologists came from Atlanta and said the slime was probably some kind of stomach add, though they would have to do some tests to be certain. They set up a lab at the university. Of course no one was sure the aliens even had stomachs "as we know them,” some ET specialist said. The aliens sure didn’t have discernible mouths. Or at least they didn’t have mouths where mouths were supposed to be; this much Brandon knew.
    But still no one could predict where the aliens were going to be, only report where they had been. They jaunted from animal to animal like kids at a wedding buffet. Even the scientists were baffled.
    Brandon had an idea, though, about where the aliens might be found, though his father absolutely refused to believe him or let him call the authorities. When Brandon suggested that having seen the aliens three separate times, he was the town expert on them, his dad gave him the Look. The Look usually preceded the Lecture on "Making Things Up” which is what his father said instead of the other l-word. Brandon backed down at once. After the Look and die Lecture, he was usually sent to bed early. That was not part of his plan.
    But now Brandon knew that he would have to go it alone, without any grown-up help.
    â€œMe, too,” Kathy pleaded.
    â€œYou’re only eight,” Brandon answered. “I’m eleven.”
    â€œNot till Thursday,” Kathy said.
    That settled it, of course. There’s nothing like a kid sister to make a boy do something he has hoped to be talked out of.
    â€œBy then the aliens will be long gone,” Brandon promised her. And he meant it. Or at least he hoped he meant it.
    â€œAt least tell me where the aliens are going to be,” Kathy begged.
    â€œOn the bike path,” Brandon said at last. He had to tell someone, and Freddy was still in Miami.
    â€œWhy the bike path?” Kathy asked.
    â€œBecause it’s the only place in town they’ve been spotted three separate times.”
    â€œSo?” Little sisters can be a hard sell.
    â€œMaybe that’s where the Mother Ship is.”
    â€œWhat’s a Mother Ship?”
    He sighed. “The place where all those mothers come from,” he said in a grumbling voice.
    â€œHow do you know they’re