We all know Montana has been discovered by West- and East-coasters fleeing the big cities, but it turns out the Chinese are checking us out as well — in, uh, a balloon.
A large balloon was spotted last week flying over central/eastern Montana. It eventually got as far as South Carolina before being shot down by the U.S. military over the Atlantic Ocean. The prevailing thought is that it was spying on sensitive sites, like our nuclear missile silos in Montana, and there was talk of shooting the thing down before it got too far. But the military said falling debris might pose a danger to people, so that got nixed.
Too bad they waited. The top brass have obviously not driven through the sparsely populated vastness of central/eastern Montana (Petroleum County, north of Billings, population 496, has just over three people per square mile.) If they had, they would have known that a tough Montana rancher could have nailed that balloon with a .270 Winchester deer rifle in no time and the worst thing that would have happened is a jackrabbit getting a sprained ankle from the falling debris.
Meanwhile, it would have been great fun to go stand under the balloon with a big sign reading, “Democracy forever!” just to mess with officials watching the TV monitors back in China.
Anyway, it all sounds like a made-up story — the Chinese using a throwback balloon to spy on us? You’d think we were back in the Civil War when clunky gas-filled balloons were used to check out enemy troops and weaponry. The Chinese already have plenty of satellites spying on us — as we them — so using a balloon is a little befuddling.
So maybe this is what Chinese balloon was really doing here:
• Looking for an affordable single-family home in Bozeman or Livingston. That mission would have ended in abject failure.
• Gathering data on snow conditions at Bridger Bowl for an upcoming ski vacation by Chinese party officials.
• Doing an elk count. Hey, it takes lots of money for our government agencies to do the annual aerial survey. Might as well farm it out to a balloon.
• Taking measurements of the checkerboard land ownership pattern in the Crazy Mountains to see if they could create an online game of giant environmental checkers.
• Trying to harness the awful power of the Livingston wind. A tip for them on that weather front: Can’t be done. Our wind is wild and free, like a bucking bull at the Livingston Roundup Rodeo. And like a bull, it will throw you and then try to stomp you. It always wins.
• Measuring the Yellowstone Caldera to see when it will explode again. Speaking of which, did you notice that the 4.1 earthquake felt here last week was about the time the balloon was passing over us? Hmmm …
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