Pg. 39 — THE BALD BEAST OF NISQUALLY HILL by Richard Stevenson
The Bald Beast of Nisqually Hill
was said to be seven feet tall,
had pink eyes that glowed in the dark,
wore a Ben Casey white lab coat.
Who knows? He might have
beamed down from a saucer,
may just have been an ET scientist
gathering specimens and nuts in May.
Some rattled teens came upon him
in a heavily forested area atop the hill,
offered a hot lead greeting instead
of trying speech and hand gestures.
Their Adidas barely touched ground
on the way down the mountain!
The beast, for his part, tumbled backward
over the ferns and booked it for the tulewamps.
Ain’t been seen since. Maybe beamed up
To his saucer to clean and dress his wounds
or pass some magic beam over the holes
to heal and seal up the seams.
Skipped like a stone across a still pond
in his trusty silver saucer. Maybe
set the controls for the heart of his sun.
I dunno. Helluva show though! Fast!
Soon a shrinking blue dot on
The screen of a fifties’ black
And white TV. No commies under the bed!
No hairy ‘squatches windin’ their transponders!
Could have handed him an apple,
but, no, that would have been too Adam and Eve
of us. He might prefer homo s. kebabs.
Better part of valor? Shoot first and run!
And so we missed an opportunity to meet
an alien scientist maybe. A lab tech ‘squatch
with a big bald dome full of who knows what
fruit from the tree of alien knowledge?
So pre-transponder Neanderthal-ish of us!
Maybe he just left the pacific northwest,
scooted down some inactive volcano crater
to China or an underground alien earth base.
It’d be nice to set a place for him
At a topside table. Maybe whomp up some
Thanksgiving dinner and swap thumb drives
of quaint and forgotten lore. Who knows what’s in store?
Cures for AIDS, cancers, and more – maybe.
New ways to turn sows into silk purses
for sure. Hey, we coulda offered him Rogaine,
Hair plugs or wigs, some very big shoes at least.
