Frying Saucer

The Interrupted Breakfast

Over the years, many alien artefacts have been presented for analysis, ranging from sizeable chunks of metal to tiny subdermal implants. But surely none has been stranger than that given to investigators by a Wisconsin chicken farmer - namely, a sample of alien cuisine.

On the morning of April 18 1961, 60-yr-old Joe Simonton was eating breakfast in his kitchen when he heard a strange rumbling sound "like knobby tires on a wet pavement".

Stepping outside to investigate, he found a flying saucer "brighter than chrome" hovering in his yard humming like a generator. It was 30 feet long and shaped like "two washbowls turned face to face". A hatch opened in the side, revealing a dark-coloured interior lined with instrument panels.

Italians

Inside the saucer stood three brown-skinned humanoids "resembling Italians". They wore dark blue knitted turtleneck uniforms complete with knitted helmets. Stranger still, they were gathered around a "flameless grill" busily cooking pancakes.

One of the 'Italians' came to the hatch and held out an empty silver jug. Guessing that he was being asked for water, Simonton took the jug into his kitchen and filled it up. Handing it back to the humanoid, he received four small pancakes in return.

Their business with him apparently concluded, one of the beings attached a line to a hook on its clothing and pulled the hatch shut.

The craft ascended slowly to a height of 20 feet, then shot out of sight in two seconds, bending some nearby pine trees with the force of its backdraft.

Eating the Evidence

Joe Simonton

Joe Simonton ponders his breakfast.

Simonton reported the incident to the US Air Force, who had one of the pancakes analysed by the Department of Health. The Department concluded that it was a "an ordinary pancake of terrestrial origin". The civilian UFO group NICAP tested another of the pancakes with identical results.

The third pancake ended up in the hands of a local judge and UFO buff named Frank Carter. Quite what he did with it, no-one seems to know. Simonton analysed the final pancake himself - by eating it! "It tasted like cardboard," he declared, adding ruefully: "If it happened again, I don't think I'd tell anybody about it".

Sources

Lynn Picknett: The Mammoth Book of UFOs, pp487-489.
Jacques Vallee: Dimensions, pp49-51.
Alan Baker: True Life Encounters: UFO Sightings, pp73-75.