Then on the night of Feb. 7 or 8 there occurred the incident that Grattan remembered perhaps most vividly of all.

"I was having a shower when it happened, he said. "We operate on diesel power at the ranch, so when the water suddenly stopped running, I put on my dressing. gown and slippers, grabbed a pocket flashlight and went out to the diesel shed to check on the pump. It was just a small difficulty, so I was only in there a minute or two.

"Now the entrance of the shed looks out directly toward the corral where we keep the calves, and as I started to leave I noticed a dim light moving above the corral. "My small flashlight wasn't any help but there was just enough light to see what the thing looked like. It was disc-shaped, I'd say about 28 feet in diameter, with a dome on top and a dim light on top of that. I couldn't tell whether the rim was lighted or whether it was reflecting the light on top, but it was a little brighter than the rest of the object and seemed to be revolving. Around the base of the dome there was more faint light coming from what looked like three or four windows. I couldn't see anything inside.”

As the snow was melting in the unusually warm night, making a quagmire of the corrals, Grattan went back to the house to put on a pair of gumboots. Then entering the corral, he
sloshed through the mud and stood almost directly under the object.

"It was about 40 feet up, moving slowly along with a wobbling motion, and underneath it I could see three equally spaced markings pointing toward the center." (See Lesley Footer's illustration based on witness' sketch.)

Convinced after numerous sightings over the "Big G" ranch that UFOs were not hostile, and in fact tended to shy away from humans, Grattan shone his small light at the object, waved his arms and tried as well as he could to show friendly interest.

"It didn't seem to notice me at all," he said. "It just kept slowly following the calves across the corral as if it was studying them, and all the time it was making a low rhythmic noise
like an IBM computer.

Asking the inevitable question about its effect on the animals, we received a surprising reply.

"It wasn't bothering them at all and, from what I've noticed, that is usually the case. These things only seem to get animals excited when they're making a loud droning noise, like that time over Taylor Lake, or when there are quite a few of them around. Maybe that's not the case everywhere, but that's been our experience.

This remark suggested an answer to the Cariboo mystery we had not considered before: perhaps the UFOs' main purpose in visiting the area was to study its unusual animal life. To our visitors from space the sights of herds of animals wandering freely about in this part of the country, and not in others, might have seemed strange indeed. If so, maybe they were equally mystified to see groups of these animals penned up as if for some reason of selectivity. If we remember that for cattle-raising productiveness the Cariboo is quite unlike the country surrounding it, we have more understanding why it could attract our visitors' attention. Assuming they were curious about the cattle as obviously they were, we can see why they avoided causing a disturbance - apparently a factor under their control.

Whatever its purpose over the calves' corral that night, the low-flying disc never once paid attention to Grattan. Its study completed, it wobbled leisurely off into the night, leaving Grattan probably more puzzled than his unannounced sightseers.