Dear Diary

By Bob Gielow

Dear Diary,

Wow!  What a strange trip we’ve had!!  It took us aeons to get here.  Lots of planning has gone into this family adventure.  I’m afraid that my worrying about possible mishaps during our journey might have been a jinx and caused them to happen.  First, my little brother got motion sick.  No shock there.  Luckily, I did not have to clean it up.  Then, the air conditioner started to make those funny noises again.  I have no idea how Dad fixed that.  The scariest time for me was when Mom was yelling at Dad because he refused to follow the directions she got from Mom’s cousin.  Dad can be pretty stubborn about directions, saying that he “prefers to follow his instincts.”  Later, Mom claimed that she was “freaking out” because she doesn’t like being so far from her mother.

My first impressions of our campsite are wonder and confusion.  Mom warned me about the brightness of the sun here, and boy was she ever right!  Thank goodness we had bought new sunglasses.  And the colours!  I guess I’ve been used to the greys and browns we see at home.  The animals we’ve seen are just bizarre.  I keep watching these big black and white beasts as they poop, eat, and chew more than it seems they should.  I wish I could talk to them.  Some animals fly through the air while others are scurrying about the ground collecting food, non-stop.  One of these skittery little creatures actually snuck into our vehicle yesterday.  Dad made sure the little bugger would never do that again, thanks to his trusty zapper.

Most annoying are these two-legged creatures who wear weird clothes and are always looking at, and talking into, these tiny devices.  Big sister tells me they are “humans” and are “in charge here”.  On our first morning, three of them showed up at our camp, held their devices up towards us and then ran away.  Around mid-day, a group of eight shook long metal sticks at us and made a whole lot of noise.  Dad zapped them when they got too close to our spaceship, and we didn’t see any more of them again for a couple of days.  Now, we only see them riding around in black and white vehicles with flashing lights and I think they’re trying to scare us away.  The airships we’ve seen mostly keep far away, especially after Dad took care of several of them.  Oh, Diary, I almost forgot to tell you, Dad let me zap two humans this morning as they were trying to sneak in under our vehicle.  Vaporizing them sure was fun!

It will be good to get these annoying humans out of the way and welcome the rest of Mom’s cousins arriving from our home galaxy.  Then, we can conduct the inauguration rituals that are supposed to occur before Mom is formally allowed to colonize this planet.  I can’t wait for her to take over, and for me to become the “Planetary Prince!”

Good night, dear diary.  Sweet dreams!!

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