Why wouldn’t aliens visit three-year-old?

I AM intrigued by news that a Selly Oak three-year-old has been visited by aliens.

This makes perfect sense. Why would beings from outer space, beings with the vast intellect to break down the seemingly impenetrable barriers of light and sound, want to make contact with Trump or Putin when they can talk to a toddler about saving our planet?

Details of the cot close encounter were revealed by the boy’s shocked mum. According to a now “declassified dossier”, she rushed into the youngster’s room after hearing him repeatedly shout “Spaceman”.

If that isn’t irrefutable proof that we’re not alone, I don’t know what is.

But on a cautionary note, my son repeatedly shouted “Piggy” when he woke up, then made swine noises. There was no hog in the room, nor a porker peering through the window.

The bizarre case has helped push Birmingham to third place in the league table of UFO hotspots, with 27 “credible” ET visits since 1998.

According to data from the Washington-based National UFO Reporting Center, pilots and even police officers have endured Close Encounters.

In 2010, for example, two fighter jets were filmed whizzing over the M5, apparently in pursuit of a flying saucer.

Just last year, the UK Airprox Board, which has its own X Files, reported a strange, cigar-shaped object was seen 16,000 feet above the city. It was “either hovering or moving in the opposite direction”.

Whisper it, but could the mystery craft be a blimp?

The Selly Oak story stands out, however. Investigators reveal: “Later, when shown a picture of a classic image of an alien with grey skin, a bulbous head and large eyes – known by researchers as a Grey – her son immediately repeated the same word and began crying.”

We would show our son pictures of Thomas the Tank Engine, Postman Pat and Noddy. He would point at each one and shout “Piggy”.

The truth is out there, but not necessarily in Selly Oak.

If further proof was needed, West Midlands Police has received 12 UFO reports in four years. The force has decided to investigate none of them, which infuriates Yours Truly.

I don’t pay taxes so the police can investigate piffling matters such as muggings and gun crime, while aliens are accosting our readers in the high street.

I’m not alone. An article on the issue by sister newspaper the Birmingham Mail drew the following social media comment from Goggz85: “All police care about is catching speeding drivers or people who have a bag of weed on them.”

That incisive observation gained four “likes” and an endorsement from Rubicon1 who typed: “True, that.”

Police would do well to take these allegations very seriously. Arrest a Martian and promotion beckons.

And what a court case! “Alien admits clocking 4,500mph above Chester Road.”

IA word of caution about alien abduction. My boss didn’t buy it, but that may have been down to the raging hangover.

I have only one nagging doubt over the plethora of UFO sightings. If these highly intelligent lifeforms can travel thousands of light years to get here, why haven’t they cashed in and started a travel business?

Pensioners would pay an arm and a leg for an “all inclusive” to the Kuiper Belt.

But 12 witnesses cannot be wrong. Witnesses such as the Solihull market trader who saw lights “just hanging there” in the night sky.

Were they on stanchions? Could they have been street lights?

In Quarry Bank, “a man smoking in his garden saw a mysterious object with flashing lights”, the Sunday Mercury itself has revealed.

Was it making a loud, whining noise? Could it have been a police car?

And in April 2009, builders at West Midland Safari Park were stunned to see a UFO floating above them. Thank goodness its occupants didn’t make contact with the monkeys.

The mischievous animals might have swiped their windscreen wipers and sparked an intergalactic war.

In the course of a 45-year journalistic career, I have interviewed a vast number of individuals who have been prodded, probed or simply stared at by aliens.

The figure spiralled shortly after the release of big screen blockbuster Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

The most disturbing account was given by a South Staffordshire woman who alleged that Martians, no bigger than her hand, gathered on her window ledge while she washed up.

My article concluded with the sentence: “‘My wife is not a nutter’, ’stressed the mum-of-four’s husband.”

One month later, she attacked him with a bread knife.

Some eye-witnesses were more plausible than others, but I was always left pondering why aliens only make themselves known to those with really naff cameras and shaky hands. The alarmed calls continue to pour in. Recently, I reported on a Chelmsley Wood painter and decorator who was visited by space tourists while walking his dog. “They didn’t speak, they just stared with these big, glowing almondshaped eyes,” he explained.

That’s a surprise. I thought their opening gambit would’ve been: “Take me to your ladder.”