Once upon a time, there was an alien with two arms and three fingers. He was green, and had two giant eyes close to the bottom of his head and a little smile. He was two feet tall.

The alien came from Mars but he was on Earth. His language is called Oink and those of his species just say “Oink, oink, oink.” He was 2,000,003 years old – these aliens can live up to 5 million years. They sprout out of the moon when they’re born, and then they fly to Mars. This alien came to Earth in a balloon and then decided to explore. He hadn’t know that he was going to be exploring another place, nor did he know exactly what a balloon was… He thought it would take him to another place on Mars, but it actually took him to Earth. When he got to Earth, he saw that it was too green.

“Oink, oink, oink (This is too green!)!” he exclaimed, wanting to go home.

He saw a green ball and then fell on his butt. He landed in Alaska. He was seeing just green – too much green – when he saw a green ball: Earth. He saw a human!

He has five fingers! the alien thought. Why are their eyes all the way up there?? Why aren’t they green!

“Well, hello there,” said the human.

“Hello,” said the alien with a small wave.

“What are you?”

“I’m an alien. What are you?”

“I’m a human,” said the human, like it sounded obvious.

“What do you like to do?” asked the alien. He was feeling unsure if the human was nice. He noticed that the human had clothes on.

“I like eating ice cream,” said the human.

The alien excitedly replied, “Me too.”

They became friends and had a long chat about their favorite ice cream flavors.

After the human left, the alien started trying to make a plan. (The alien did not have a name, so he never thought to ask humans for their names.) He saw snow, trees, bushes, but no people. He thought he could build a sled and a slope. On his sled, he would go up the slope and off to Mars. But, the alien was pretty stupid – he didn’t realize that that wouldn’t be high enough.

Nevertheless, he built his sled with some tree bark and put some bushes on it to sleep on, because he knew it would be a long way. Then, he shaped the snow into a big slope. It took a week.

“This is going to work!” he said.

He ran and jumped onto his sled, and went up the slope. Then he slid back down, tumbled off his sled and fell on his head. He crossed his arms and frowned and said, “humph.”

If he couldn’t make it back to Mars, he would never see his family and friends again. So, he went into the forest. His new plan was to climb the tree and make a spring board. He thought he could make it out of two flat pieces of wood and a few twigs for the springs.

When he finished making the springboard, he tried it. The twigs immediately broke, so he tried to find stronger ones. Once he was done with that he tried it again, but he was thinking so much about how to prevent the twigs from breaking that his contraption didn’t even spring. He only got one inch off the ground.

So, he brought the springboard to the top of the tallest tree and then set it up in the middle. It fell through slightly, but he didn’t notice. He jumped on the springboard and it sank even lower… and fell out the tree. Because the alien picked the tallest tree, he had a longer drop.

He landed on his back. His whole butt turned purple. He was tired, so he went to sleep. Then, when he woke up, he saw the same human! He immediately went to greet the him. “Hello there, again. Good morning. Why are you here?” asked the alien.

“I went camping and I’m going back home. What have you been doing?”

“I have been trying to get back to Mars.”

“I wonder when the next rocket ship is going up to Mars. Oh, wait – I read in the newspaper that there’s a rocket ship going to Mars in a month!”

“Oh, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful news!”

The human called the police. “This alien needs to get back to his home planet, Mars. I heard that there’s a rocket ship going there sometime soon and was wondering if this alien could use it to get home,” said the human.

The police came. The officer said, “Okay, I will let the rocket ship people know that there will be an alien aboard the rocket.”

***

The alien was at the airport – he was going to Disney World to have fun and explore before the month was up and he had to leave. He had heard about Disney World from the human and thought it sounded like fun. The alien boarded the plane and got a lot of snacks. On the plane, the flight attendants sold jalapenos, and because he didn’t know what they were, he decided to try some. Then he freaked out because they were so hot. He stuck out his tongue and tried to breathe fire. The woman next to him said, “dairy helps.”

So, he bought some milk and drank it, which helped. Soon, the plane ride was over and the alien got off the plane. He bought dinner at the airport, checked in to his hotel, put down all his bags, and went to Disney World.   

He saw a lot of rides and parking lots, cotton candy, and ticket booths. First, he went to the ticket booth. When he reached the front of the line, he got 85 tickets and went to see what rides there were. He got in line to see the Disney Princesses, but he didn’t know what they were so he didn’t know what to say to them. Once it was his turn, he had figured out what the activity was about: there were a bunch of ladies dressed in fancy dresses named Cinderella, Snow White, and Belle. He thought it was pretty boring, so he left.

Then, he saw a big castle. A bunch of the towers were blue, but the rest of the structure was white. There was one gigantic tower in the middle, and the castle was humongous.

“Ooo, aaahhh,” he said.

It felt kind of weird because he was only two feet tall and the castle looked like it was five billion feet tall. He had never seen a building so tall, since there were not any on Mars. He went into the castle, and again he said, “Ooo, aaahhh.” He walked through it and went on a couple of other rides, and then he went back to his hotel to get some sleep.

***

After he had woken, he went to a diner to eat brunch. He ordered a bagel and cream cheese with sprinkles and ketchup on top. Then, he saw the mustard and decided to put that on too.

“I wonder if my fellow aliens have noticed that I’m gone,” he said. He missed them, but he didn’t notice because he was having so much fun.

When he was done, he left the restaurant. He went upstairs to his room to watch TV, but found it very boring because he couldn’t figure out how to turn it on. He then went to the garden and sniffed the air. It smelled like flowers for some odd reason, and he didn’t know why. It looked very different from mars.

“Earth doesn’t make sense. Why does it smell like flowers randomly? Mars makes sense. But Earth doesn’t.”

Mars had other aliens and Earth didn’t. It made him feel lonely.  

He still had extra tickets, so he went on tons of rides. He came back to his hotel room, took a nap, and when he woke up it was lunch time. He went to a restaurant for lunch.

After that, he went back to his hotel room and finished unpacking. By the time he was done it was dinnertime, so he went to McDonald’s and got a burger.

Once the month had passed, he went back to the airport and boarded the plane. He made sure he didn’t order the jalapenos again. Once he got to Alaska, he met the human at the airport who brought him to where the rocket would take off.

“Goodbye!” said the human.

“Goodbye! I had a nice time on earth,” said the alien.

“It was nice meeting you.”

“I might go back to Earth someday.”

“Okay. If you do, come visit me.”

“Okay, goodbye!” The alien was a little sad. He looked at the rocket. He was nervous to go on the rocket ship because he had never been on one before … and also because it was making really loud noises, and it was gigantic. His arms were flopping all over the place and his feet were doing a tap dance. He saw a pink tutu outside the rocket ship, so he ran outside and put it on. He started doing ballet, not knowing he was doing something that actually existed. He called ballet ‘Oink’ and danced for one hour. He was having a lot of fun and found that ballet helped his nervousness go away, so he danced all the way back to the rocket ship. He was tired and fell asleep during liftoff.

When the alien woke up, he was almost back to Mars. He also realized that he was floating. He ate nuts for breakfast and played around with flying until lunchtime. It felt really weird to be flying since he hadn’t done it before. He ate lunch, which also consisted of nuts, as well as some dried strawberries. And, for dessert, he ate an ice cream sandwich. In only a few minutes, he would be back on Mars – he was so excited.

After five minutes, the he arrived at Mars! He got off the spaceship. His friends and family were already waiting for him.

“Strange. I’ve never seen an animal like that,” said his friend about a human that was also in the rocket ship.

“Bye bye, humans! These are humans – the people you saw on the rocket ship,” he explained to his family.