Family appeal for return of abducted aliens

A couple from South Roanoke, Virginia are seeking the return of two aliens abducted from their front yard. Some humans abducted the aliens, in broad daylight. The crime occurred on April 22 in Robert and Dian Bolling’s front yard, sometime between 11am and 1pm And the Bollings want them back. They’ve combed the neighborhood, stapled wanted posters to telephone poles and taped them to storefront windows. So far, nothing.

The 3-foot-tall bright green molded plastic creatures have been fixtures in the family’s yard for more than a decade, where the Bollings live with their three sons. They bought them at an after-Halloween clearance sale. On the surface it seems just like an ordinary prank. But there’s another dimension to this. To grasp that, you have to get to know the Bollings. They’re no ordinary family. Austen Bolling, 15, and his twin brothers Connor and Alex, who are 13, have Fragile X Syndrome, a genetic abnormality that sets them apart from other children their age.

The inherited condition causes profound learning, speech and language problems. Children with it have short attention spans, a poor ability to make eye contact and great difficulty adjusting to change. It affects roughly one in 2,000 boys and one in 4,000 girls. About one in every 260 women are carriers of the gene. The boys require near around-the-clock care. That’s greatly limited the couple, who both work, in meeting other folks and developing normal friendships. “We have a very different household,” Dian Bolling said. “We have love and laughter.” But in the process of parenting three special needs children, “we’ve lost a lot of friends; lost a lot of family members. It’s just hard to deal with, handling the kids.”

The aliens have proved to be a very effective way for the Bollings to connect to others. Devising new yard adventures for the aliens was a stress-relieving diversion for a stressed-out couple. The couple have also used the figurines to teach their boys communication and socialization skills. The kids realize something is missing from their front yard. They seem to miss them, although they’re unable to articulate it like their parents can. On Friday, the Bollings reported the theft to Roanoke City Police. City Police spokeswoman Aisha Johnson confirmed the report. Police have no record of any previous alien lawn ornament abductions, she added. A policeman later called Bolling back to say he had assigned it to a detective.