Little Yellow Balls

A few months after their high school graduate left for bootcamp, Flat Stanley's neighbors solved the mystery behind an on-going shortage of boy's gym socks by cleaning out his room: Under Chris's bed and in his closet were enough barely-worn white socks to account for his entire senior year. It was a once-and-done deal. They found the socks, washed them, gave them away, and moved on.

At Flat Stanley's house, gym socks weren't a problem. One son only needed one pair, to be replaced when he wasn't looking. The other son supplied his own white socks, selected by his girlfriend. When each kid moved out, FS and spouse hosed out their rooms and threw away everything too big to wash down a drain.

Six or seven summers ago, somebody around here had a pellet gun. The ammunition was a million beebees. FS vaguely remembers strong, fast teenage boys leaping over the fence, sleuthing around corners, ducking and rolling through ambushes and causing some collateral damage to innocent landscape.


FS's house has been cleaned a time or two since those days. Rooms emptied, walls painted, furniture rearranged, old toys thrown out. It's reasonable to think that the vestiges of childhood occupation would by now be long gone. No more legos or broken slinkies, the RPG cards are history, Monopoly and Risk are in the give-away pile. Even the last of the green soldiers have been unearthed from their strategic locations in the yard, window sills, and special niches and been granted retirement or honorable discharges.

The beebees are another story.
FS assumed they were plastic, but this was probably incorrect. More likely they represent a reproductive stage in the life cycle of ancient race of galactic conquerors. They could be an alien invasion waiting for an invisible ray to hatch them open. They'll open in waves. The first wave will immediately contact The Brain. Pinky will be right there with him, of course.


The really insidious part of this monstrous plan to invade and take over planet earth isn't the way the enemy eggs look like a child's toy. Yes, that's clever enough. The truly diabolical aspect of this plan is how the eggs themselves reproduce.

Flat Stanley finds them hiding under furniture in rooms recently emptied, swept bare and re-furnished. They turn up in underwear drawers. Medicine cabinets. The glove box in a car not even owned when the original settlers arrived. In the garden at the roots of an old rose bush. The stump of a tree. Under the grass mat covering a sidewalk that has been edged two or three times a year for years.

It's only a matter of time before these little aliens have amassed enough to take over the world. Last week FS put out three trash cans full. She noticed that the neighbors on either side each had one trash can full of these eggs. This morning one showed up in FS's coffee. It is the end of the world as we know it. Prepare.