This article was published in the daily newspaper Greeley Tribune, Greeley-Weld County, USA, on September 3, 2004, and on their website at
http://www.greeleytrib.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040903/NEWS/109030031&rs=1
Note: the explanation surfaced three days later in same newspaper.
Mike Peters, peters@greeleytrib.com
September 3, 2004
Look! Up in the sky!
It's a bird! It's a plane!
No! It's a ... it's a ... well ... it's a ... big blue hot dog?
Wynne Levelle, who lives near Jackson Elementary School in south-central Greeley, first reported the flying sausages to the Tribune on Thursday afternoon and even shot a photo of them.
She's not sure what they were. She estimated the floating tube-like things to be about 10 feet long, floating over Greeley, first from the east to the west, then back again. It was about 2 p.m. Thursday.
Levelle, a retired teacher, said she was on the phone talking to family in California when she looked out the window and saw the Floating Things in the Sky -- FTSs. (She wouldn't call them "UFOs.")
"I told the person on the phone that things were floating over our house," Levelle said, laughing. "And they asked 'What have you been drinking?' "
Levelle said she's glad for two things:
1. She told her husband, Rick Mawson, a retired minister, and he looked up and also saw the floating tubes.
2. She took a picture with her digital camera.
Although the floating things are far away in the photo, she said that, up close, they didn't appear to be balloons. When Levelle's photo is enlarged, it appears the tubes could be a string of round balloons, but a quick check with area auto dealerships showed there were no reports of runaway balloons.
At the Greeley-Weld County Airport, manager Mike Reesman said they had no reports of either floating things or UFOs. Reesman seemed a bit skeptical.
Evans Police Officer George Roosevelt said no UFOs had been reported to his office or to Weld County dispatch, which would normally take 911 or UFO calls. Roosevelt did relate his favorite UFO story, however: "A few years ago, we got some UFO reports, and I saw it in the sky. It was actually beeping." Roosevelt said he followed the beeping UFO until it landed. "Then I found out it was some kind of weather balloon from UNC."
Gloria Reynolds, spokeswoman for the University of Northern Colorado, checked with the UNC Earth Sciences Department and a university meteorologist and reported that no one at the university has been launching large tubes or any kind of weather balloons. At least not recently.
So, unless someone steps forward with information about the Floating Things, Levelle will just have to keep watching the skies.
The truth is out there.
The website shows the following picture:
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In the reader's comment section of the newspaper's website appeared the following comment:
Re: Sky sausages pique curiosity of wondering Greeley couple
by SEPTEMBER on Friday, September 03 @ 15:36:29 PDT
"I was taking my daughter to school along with her friend at about 1pm on that day, and the girls noticed them first. they seemed to perfectly rectagular, very long. they did not look like baloons to us. i had completely forgotten about them until i read story on channel 7 news web site. they were black. what were they? someone has to know.
