Paratrooper Lands on Vermont Mistletoe Farm, Sneezes

RUTLAND, VT — A wayward paratrooper, after leaping from a military training jet, landed mysteriously in a field of nascent mistletoe here in Vermont this morning. Details on the incident are sparse, but according to eyewitnesses, upon impact the paratrooper glanced to his left and then sneezed loudly. The unusual event caused a commotion throughout the village of Rutland, where a paratrooper has not touched ground since 1993. Mistletoe is the town’s main export. 

“I heard this loud sneeze!” noted a little-old-lady peering over a picket fence alongside television reporters. “It sounded like a cat to me.” 

Military training procedures occur frequently throughout New England, including parachute deployment, since the region’s citizens are typically too engrossed in their own personal crankiness to notice flying soldiers or missile tests. Often, according to Sgt. Fred Vlasic, some first-time jumpers lose control of their parachutes and drift aimlessly over the countryside. “Most of the time, these are soldiers that we wish we had never conscripted. So having them drift off is not really a terrible thing.”

The mistletoe farmer, who wished to remain anonymous, explained that he notified Rutland officials as soon as he heard “a giant cat sneeze” in his fields. County patrolmen arrived shortly thereafter to collect the bruised, yet lucid, soldier from the prickly mistletoe bushes. By this time, community onlookers had gathered to see the parachuting intruder. 

The soldier was loaded forcefully into an animal-patrol vehicle, and brought to Rutland Animal Hospital. After surveying the damage to the soldier’s knees, which included scrapes from mistletoe thorns, the veterinarian team decided to put him down. 

“Yessiree, Bob!” said Dr. Micheal Weathebed, chief veterinarian at the hospital. “I gave him the big needle. It’s a shame, though. That had to have been the biggest cat I’ve ever seen.”