U.F.O.

Last night, November 16, 2007, I saw an Unidentified Flying Object.
No, seriously.

I was walking up to Scott and Wren's condo, parallel to the building, when I saw something floating in the sky just at the tree line. We have an airport in Napa, so I don't always give these types of lights a second glance. But, as I watched, this object looked so strange, that I stopped walking and just stared at it. My first thought was that it might be a comet, but there was no tail to it. And it didn't seem to have a specific course.

My second thought was that someone had let go a homemade lantern or something, and it was light enough to be floating on the air current.

My third thought was that it was a helicopter, but the searchlight seemed to be pointing up towards the sky instead of towards the ground.

The light was bright orange, and flickered slightly like it was a flame, rather than a bulb. It was extremely bright and steady. This light seemed to be at the very bottom, and just above seemed to be some kind of material, like a parachute. It undulated slightly, and was very pale and seemed transparent. It looked for all the world like a plastic grocery bag with a lantern like flame glowing in it.

I stopped watching and knocked on the door. When Wren answered, I dragged her outside to look at it. At this point, it had moved further away, and all that was visible was the actual light. When I told Wren to come and look at something, the first thing she said on her way out the door was that there was a meteor shower tonight. But, as soon as she saw it we both agreed it wasn't a meteor. As we watched, the light stopped moving across the sky, and just seemed to grow smaller. Scott joined us, and a minute or so later, so did George. Even in that span of one minute, the light had grown even fainter, and we all agreed it seemed to be moving directly away from us, straight up. Our friend Mike arrived at this point, and we all five of us stood transfixed. George was capturing it all on his cell phone, but when we re-played it, the screen was completely black and all he could pick up were Mike making smart-ass comments and me giggling like an idiot.

It was all very surreal, but I have to believe there is some very logical explanation. The only strange thing was that it started off kind of lolling about lazily, then shooting straight up until it left the atmosphere and the light winked out. It was very cool, but I never once got a "creepy" sensation, or felt frightened. I guess I've grown up around airplanes too much to ever really believe anyone sees UFO's.

I just wish someone else had seen it at the very beginning, when the rest of it was more visible.

After we were sure it was gone, we started into the house. I did see a shooting star right then, and someone joked it was a man falling to earth. After this, the requisite "black helicopter" stories started. I should pick up a copy of The Napa Sentinel today to see if Harry Martin reports any other UFO sightings from last night.

He must have buzzed the tower one too many times