Home, home on the range;
Where the deer and the UFOs play;
Where often is heard
An exciting word
About what the night-riders say.

In the Cariboo ranch country, the century-old song could be headed for such a revision because of reported sightings of UFOs in the sky.

Brian Gratton, operator of a ranch near Lone Butte, and some of his ranch hands, reported sighting UFOs on 5 consecutive nights this month. (July)

Gratton, who runs a summertime guest ranch, said some of his guests also saw the bright objects, which he said were accompanied by a droning sound that made his stock restless.

One of his guests, Mrs. George Black, widow of a member of Parliament for the Yukon, made her first sighting July 13.

About 10:30 p.m. she saw a light in the sky 3 times as large as any star she had ever seen. It kept shivering and moving down... she thought it was going to come right down on the treetops but disappeared through the trees. Gratton referred to it as "the mothership."

Gratton was with his wife Pat and a wrangler, Shawn Broe, when he first saw the strange objects on July 11.

Gratton, who has run the ranch for 10 years, said some of the objects had red and green blinking lights and shifted, bobbed and weaved in the sky.

“I saw one of them veer off Green Lake and the front of it looked like some kind of craft... it was saucer-shaped,” he said.

“Some nights you could hear a drone or hum like a high-tension wire. It woke my mother up 23 miles from my place.”

Gratton said he could only partially identify the one object as definitely looking like a craft of some kind.

The mothership had a very bright white pulsating light while the others were smaller and seemed to move about in small units of three. The sightings continued through July 15.

On the first night, said the rancher, he saw 13 objects, including the brightest one. By the 4th night, most of the cowhands and guests were staying up through the night to watch the skies.

Gratton said he has 480 head of cattle and horses on the ranch and the droning sound was so eerie it made the animals restless. Even the dogs were acting up. The objects appeared to drone when they were stationary in the sky.