Rhoads Stevens
(This article originally appeared here: Daily Evening Bulletin, San Fran, CA, Monday, Aug. 9, 1869, Issue 104, col D)
Mr. Parker [who, our research revealed, never failed to make rolled-up pills of his bread], an old and respected citizen of Los Nietos Township [not Spaceship], exhibited to us [we who had disguised ourselves in floral-print suits and masks of papier-mâché painted beige. In our pockets, we had guns carved from soap and blackened with soot] yesterday a number of pieces of meat that fell on the farm of J. Hudson, in the township [not steamship, not friendship], at 12 o'clock noon, on Sunday last. From what we can learn it was a shower of meat and blood similar to that reported in Santa Clara county some months ago, covering an area of about two acres of ground. [We had had nothing to do with that business in Santa Clara, but, certainly, it was we who had thrown down that meat in Los Nietos. About five thousand feet up in the sky, we had floated a blue tarp because the sky was blue that day. It was clear that day. (We had gray tarps for gray days and black ones for night.) These tarps of ours have holes in them, so once we get our tarps up there we simply have to arrange ourselves by these holes and wait for the right time (in this instance, noon) before we start reaching into our sacks and casting meat down onto whatever township we choose.] Some ten or more persons were at the house of Mr. Hudson, preparing for the funeral of a child [this poor child, our research had shown. We had installed viewing tubes all throughout this child's house, and, as always, our tubes showed us what we had assumed: that this child's father heated up butter knives on the stove and sank these hot instruments into the soles of his son's feet, to see if he could make his son walk a different way] and were startled by the fall of meat and blood that lasted fully three minutes, covering the blades of corn and leaving them red. [Ordinarily, we drop meat for just two minutes, but, because of what we had seen this child endure, we tacked on another minute of meat.] The blood that lodged upon the corn blades and grass was mixed with short, fine hair, resembling the outer coating of furred animals. [These animals were horses.] The meat, which was found over the entire two acres, was in pieces ranging from fine particles to strips of six and eight inches in length, and had the appearance of being freshly torn from some animal or animals. [Horses.] Mr. Parker [oh, he of the bread pills] exhibited to us [our faces sweating a bit under the papier-mâché, our hands in our pockets clutching our soap guns and turning them to suds] several pieces of the meat, varying from one to six inches in length; one of which appeared to be the thighs of some animal; another was liver; and another, picked up by a gentleman present, was the lower part of a heart, in perfect shape, and about one and a half inches long. [A perfect tiny horse heart.] A large quantity of meat was gathered up and preserved by different parties. The day was perfectly clear, and the sun was shining brightly, and although the shower of meat and blood appeared to come from the coast, there was no perceptible breeze at the time. [True—the only breeze that day had been our breath.] The occurrence naturally created considerable excitement among those present, and the hope is freely indulged in that science will offer some reason for this very singular phenomenon. [Just a few days later, all the meat we had thrown for three minutes—all the meat that had covered two acres of corn—assembled en masse in a field. It assembled itself into a gigantic pregnant horse, an animal larger than any building in Los Nietos. And this horse wasn't pregnant with a foal. No. It was pregnant with a kid—and not a goat kid. It had a boy in it, wearing the suit he had been buried in. It's not singular if it happens again.]