OKC Animal Welfare/FacebookAs many people prepare for the definite unveiling of all the definite aliens located in Area 51, one animal shelter is asking people to consider taking home another lifeform instead.
Oklahoma Animal Welfare is urging people to stop by their premises en route to Area 51, and to think about adopting one of the many animals they have there.
Posting some undeniably adorable photos of their cats and dogs, complete with tin-foil helmets and space-y filters, the shelter asked people to ‘come storm our shelter…’ adding: ‘We have great animals ready to protect you from the Area 51 aliens. Adoption isn’t that far out of this world!’
Come storm our shelter…We have great animals ready to protect you from the Area 51 aliens. Adoption isn’t that far out of this world!#stormtheshelter
Posted by OKC Animal Welfare on Friday, July 19, 2019
The reference to Area 51 is of course in regards to the recent viral news of a plan to storm the US military base.
The Facebook event, called ‘Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us’ initially started as a bit of light-hearted fun, but soon had more than one and a half million people ‘attending’, some of whom seemed genuinely up for the idea.
The page was created at the end of June this year, by Matty Roberts from California, and included instructions such as ‘If we naruto run, we can move faster than their bullets. Let’s see them aliens’.
Me running away after saving the baby aliens from Area 51 pic.twitter.com/vmCUWs5ajY
— Saeed Awawdeh (@SaeedDiCaprio) July 19, 2019
However, the sudden rush of popularity, and the traction the event page was gaining, made Roberts feel a little uneasy, even fearing US authorities might show up at his door before too long.
As he told CNN: ‘I was just like, the FBI’s going to show up at my house and it got a little spooky from there.’
My alien waiting for me to save it from Area 51 but I’ve moved on to the Cats trailer pic.twitter.com/dZ3YIZwO6o
— Anthony Smith (@AnthonyBLSmith) July 20, 2019
Roberts admitted, however, that the idea was ‘entirely satirical’, believing it to be ‘just a funny idea’ until the attention it received made it feel a little too real.
While many people took to Twitter to share funny ideas about what they’re going to do with the aliens once they’d been released from Area 51, it seems the Oklahoma Animal Welfare shelter has other ideas, and those who do want a new being in their life should definitely consider stopping by. You can check out their website here.
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Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.