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As Bigfoot said to Nessie, this stuff is getting difficult to take seriously anymore.

July 10, 2007

— Three types of news stories tell readers that summer is really here by bringing them up to date about Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster or unidentified flying objects.

The last part of that trio weighed in this past week with a story from Flying Saucer Central -- otherwise known as Roswell, N.M. -- about the world-famous incident that did or did not take place there on July 8, 1947.

That's when a "flying disc" crashed near town. Its wreckage, and the body of its alien pilot (not a little green man, but the big- eyed, big-domed skinny version now called a "Roswell gray"), were scooped up by the U.S. Air Force, which covered up the incident by calling it a "weather balloon."

OK, OK, we know, but at least it's not a story about a hairy 8- foot-creature leaving footprints all over the forests of the West or a prehistoric saurian taunting tourists to the skirl of bagpipes at a Scottish lake.

Roswell is firmly on the map as the worldwide center of UFO daffiness, with stores selling glow-in-the-dark saucers and restaurants setting aside spaces for "UFO parking." Thousands come for the UFO festival every July, and about 2.5 million people have visited the local UFO museum since its founding in 1992.

A pair of local entrepreneurs now wants to build a $67 million resort complex to be called "Earth Station Roswell" to drag in more tourist dollars, while the city is contemplating a UFO- themed amusement park with the same idea in mind.

Fun is fun, and if people want to spend their hard-earned intergalactic credits on such things, they can.

Others, however, might want to wait until the combined exhibit featuring a live Roswell gray, Sasquach and Nessie comes around.

Now, that will be out of this world.