The Martians have landed
When Ole Johnny Mudd realized that the Martian came from a very advanced culture, he was bound and determined that no one should try to hurt him in any way. No sooner had he reached that decision when a jeep full of army personnel came right up to the aircraft. Quick as a wink Ole Johnny Mudd took off his own cowboy hat and put it on the head of the Martian. Ole Mac took off his own bandana and tied it around the Martian’s neck. The army people tried to inspect the flying saucer, but they couldn’t make sense of it one way or another. The flashing lights and gizmos were not like anything they had ever seen before. They asked Ole Johnny Mudd what he knew about the spacecraft.
“Well, I’ll tell you partner,” he replied. “My friend Mac and I were out showing the beauty of the desert to our friend, who came up to visit us from Mexico, and we had barely come upon this wreckage. When we saw this weird contraption here, we thought it might be an old Studebaker car.”
The army people weren’t quite sure if the two cowboys were telling them the truth, so they turned to look at the westernlooking Martian.
“Buenos días, amigos,” the Martian said to them in perfect Spanish. “Yo me llamo José Jiménez.” (He really was from an advanced culture.)
The army people looked at the Martian wearing the hat and the bandana rather suspiciously but since they didn’t speak Spanish they didn’t ask him anything. They were, however, very curious about the Martian’s greenish-gray skin color so they asked Ole Johnny Mudd to be their interpreter. The Martian mumbled something in Spanish, all the while hiding his mouth under his bandana.
“He says that his skin tone has changed because of the hot sun and also from drinking too much tequila,” Ole Johnny Mudd said to them.
The army personnel decided that as long as they had the flying saucer, they didn’t care much about a Mexican alien who was visiting the New Mexico desert. They loaded the flying saucer in the back of their jeep, and they drove off to take a closer look at the saucer in their lab in Roswell. Ole Johnny Mudd poked Ole Mac with his elbow and smiled. It seemed as if they had gotten away with their “little white fib.”
The Martian followed the men to Ole Mac’s truck, and they drive him to J.B. Foster’s ranch house. They decided that the Martian needed some more color on his skin in order to keep him from looking too suspicious. Once they got into the kitchen, Ole Johnny Mudd prepared a huge pot of red-hot chile to eat. He was a little afraid that it might be too spicy for the Martian, but he just gulped it down as if it were cool, spring water. When he was finished, he thanked Ole Johnny Mudd and he said: “This food you call ‘chile’ reminds me of our food back on Mars, but ours is much hotter.”
When he saw that Ole Johnny Mudd was confused, he added: “Why do you think that our planet is so red? Why we practically live on nothing but red-hot chile sauce. In fact, it was the Martians who planted the first red chile pods in this desert thousands of years ago. When we turn green, it is because our skin is so cold and when it turns red, it means that our temperature is back to normal.”
Ole Johnny Mudd and his friend Ole Mac curled up in their sleeping bags for the night. The Martian though, just stretched out on top of some red-hot lava rocks outside and he started thinking about how he just might get back to Mars without being discovered.