A California farmer, Larry Munson, 61, has been actively stalling a small expeditionary party of extraterrestrials for over two days after being requested to "Take us to your leader" by the little green men upon their landing in one of Mr. Munson’s tomato fields.

"I saw this light and heard a lot of strange noises coming from the fields, so I went to check it out and there they were. Just like in the movies. These little brown guys that look like they’re half frogs and half monkeys wearing little bubble helmets come sliding down from the ramp on the spaceship, and one, the leader I suppose, shook my hand and asked me to take them to my leader. I thought of Bush, and then I thought, ‘Oh Christ, we’re doomed’."

But Larry thought swiftly and, like a true hero, he instinctively put the welfare of others before his own, and began to stall.

"Basically, I decided my best bet was to play dumb. At first, I just pretended I didn’t hear him, hoping he’d ask me something else. But then he repeated himself, so I pretended that I didn’t speak English, saying, ‘no habla ingles’, but then he said it in Spanish, so the jig was up. ‘Thirty seconds down, eleven months, or, God forbid, four years and eleven months, to go’, I thought. So then I feign sudden understanding and take them over to the new riding lawn mower I got and point to it, but they said, ‘No. We wish to meet your leader, not an implement for the trimming of earth grass’. So I walk them to the mailbox and open it, but they said, ‘no, not letters. We wish to meet the leader’. Once again I pretend to understand, but insist on introducing them to my wife first, who after the inevitable shock, seemed to understand the situation we were in and played along quite well. She baked them a raspberry pie and successfully changed the subject to the weather on their home planet, then pinochle, whose rules and cultural relevance she discussed in copious detail, managing to consume several hours until they started in on the ‘take us to your leader’ stuff again. Feebly, I tried to introduce them to our cat Josephine, but they weren’t buying it, so I got the car keys and took them to Goodyear tires where they gently reproved me that they weren’t interested in the ‘leader in inflatable vulcanized rubber tubes for carbon burning human conveyances, but wished to meet the leader, whom, for sake of clarification, might otherwise be called king, president, prime minister, emperor, or chancellor’. Man, I was less than twelve hours in and already felt like they had me on the ropes."

Despite the daunting and seemingly infeasible task that lies before him, Larry has expressed some sentiment of hope.

"Well, they seem perfectly patient, like they’re not capable of impatience. Whenever they ask me to take them to my leader and I introduce them to a goat at the petting zoo, show them a fire hydrant, or take them down some deserted road that goes on forever, they merely correct me in a real friendly way. They’ll say something like, ‘You are mistaken. We desire to make the acquaintance of your leader so that we may conduct discourse with him or her, not be led down a long road that leads to a rusty bed frame’. So maybe I can just keep this up until we have a president whose introduction won’t incur the immediate destruction of the planet. Jesus, I better get a statue that’s like, twenty stories tall for this."