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Australian Air Force Intelligence people were all over the place. Rumors circulated blaming the Soviets for using the vast open spaces of Australia to develop scientific ideas far ahead of the Americans. Why the Soviets could not conduct their secret testing in the vast open spaces of Siberia was not disclosed. Neither was it revealed why the pilots of the super-secret communist weapon could not resist the temptation to buzz the tractor of a twenty-seven-year-old banana grower in the aa ted ---14 capitalist world. Fortunately, there were several natural explanations for the sighting or the nests, although only one hypothesis, suggested by a Sydney Sun-Herald reader on January 30, accounted for both. He believed the outerspace panic in Queensland was caused by a "tall shy bird with a blue body and red markings on the head." It was either a type of brolga or a blue heron, but the man did not know the correct scientific name. Many times, as he wandered barefooted though the bush, he said, he had seen the birds dancing, but they flew away at high speed before he could reach them: "They would resemble a vaporous blue cloud and would certainly make a whirring sound in flight." Unfortunately for this pretty and imaginative theory, it got no backing from biologists. Museum ornithologist H. J. Disney thought the brolgas could not make circular depressions of symmetrical design. He was similarly skeptical about the "bald-headed coot theory" advanced by another man, Gooloogong resident Ken Adams. "I've never heard of this habit by the bird," Disney said. Researcher Donald Hanlon has pointed out that another explanation for the nests has been proposed locally: they are the "playground of crocodiles in love." I fully share Hanlon's skepticism about this last explanation, because it could hardly apply to the nests found in Ohio, which will be discussed in a moment, or to the damaged wheat field in Montsoreau. A Queensland resident, Alex Bordujenko, who knows about the crocodiles, claims the reeds are too thick in Horseshoe Lagoon for crocodiles to move through them. a4 1 wo44 a4 toro4 1. 1a So here we are: dancing cranes are held responsible by some people for bending reeds that are so thick crocodiles, according to other people, cannot move through them. What really caused the damage? Nobody knows. On his way home that Wednesday night, George Pedley decided he would tell no one about the "spaceship" in the swamp. He saw neither portholes nor antennae on the blue-gray object and no sign of life either inside or about it. Furthermore, he had always laughed at flying saucer stories. But then he met Albert Pennisi, the owner of Horseshoe Lagoon, and disclosed the sighting. He was very surprised when Pennisi believed him right away and told him he had been dreaming for a week that a flying saucer would land on his property. This last detail places the Queensland saucer nests in the best tradition of the fairy-faith. The time: six months before the Queensland experience. The place: Delroy, Ohio. On June 28, 1965, a farmer, John Stavano, heard a series of explosions. Two days later, he discovered a curious formation on the ground. When analyzed, soil and wheat samples showed no evidence of an explosion. Wheat plants seemed to have been sucked out of the ground, like the uprooted reeds in Queensland or the uprooted grass in a French landing of 1954 in Poncey. The Ohio incident was carefully investigated by local civilian researchers. A. Candusso and Larry Moyers accompanied by Gary Davis. They found the strange circular formation on Stavano's farm, which is situated on a high point. At the center of the ring was a circular depression about twenty- eight inches in diameter. It was probed with a pinch bar, but only loose soil was found for a depth of nine inches. Much of the wheat had been removed, roots and all, and clods of soil a few inches long had been disturbed. The wheat was laid down like the spokes of a wheel; there was no swirling cr. aman effects as in the Tully nests. ° ~ If we turn from Australia and Ohio to England, we are faced with another incident. As reported in The Flying Saucer Review by editor Waveney Girvan (September 1963): July 16, 1963, will long be remembered in the annals of British Ufology. Something appeared to have landed on farmer Roy Blanchard's field at the Manor Farm, Charlton, Wiltshire. The marks on the ground were first discovered by a farmworker, Reg Alexander. They overlapped a potato field and a barely field. The marks comprised a saucer-shaped