Once upon a time, there was a headstrong young Israeli science officer whose proper name was Lt. Golda Lachterman. But because she had beautiful hair in golden curls and breath that smelled like raw fish, everyone called her Goldilox.

Goldilox was a crew member aboard the first Israeli mission to the planet Arctos in the system Cynosura. Due to its earth-like size and atmosphere, the planet had been singled out for colonization. Arctos was covered with a dense evergreen forest that was nearly impenetrable -- but it sure beat the Sinai.

Upon landing, the scouting party commander told everyone, "Keep close and use the buddy system." Goldilox figured "Buddy System" was the commander's nickname for the group's handheld communication system. Since she had no real buddies and no respect for authority, she ignored him. She wandered far and wide gathering botanical specimens, heedlessly plunging deeper and deeper into the dense alien forest. It was a long time before the realization hit her -- she was lost.

She tried to radio the ship using her handheld communicator but it didn't work.

"Shit, I forgot to put new batteries in my Buddy System." Goldilox threw her communicator to the ground.

After groping blindly through mile after mile of forest, Goldilox came upon a small, quaint wooden cottage nestled amongst the giant conifers.

"What a little dump." Goldilox remarked. "Obviously not the dwelling of a humanoid. Humans haven't built such hovels since the advent of modular housing."

The whole cottage appeared to be covered with a continuous unbroken sheet of bark as if it had grown there in place, the way skin covers the human body.

"This house may not be what it seems," Goldilox said. Then she laughed hysterically at her own bad pun. Goldilox pushed her way through the front door without even knocking. She wasted no time considering things like manners or decorum. She didn't bother to call "Yoo-hoo, is anybody home?" or anything! She entered like a conquering general and immediately began snooping and poking around in a structure that was obviously someone's private residence.

Everything in the home was made of wood. Furniture and other household items seemed to occur in groups of three. And each was a different size. Goldilox dictated an entry into her voice log: "A definite lack of uniformity to these quarters. Occupants obviously not technologically advanced enough to have discovered the advantages of standardization and the assembly line method of production. Conclusion: occupants are inferior life forms."

In the dining room, Goldilox found three tables lined up together and cascading in size: from large to medium to small. On top of each was a wooden mug. On the great, huge table was a great huge mug; on the middle-sized table was a middle-sized mug, and on the little, tiny table was a little, tiny mug.

"Well, if there's not a uniformity, at least there's a certain consistency here," she muttered.

Each mug was filled with a golden liquid that smelled oddly familiar. She was very thirsty from her long hike in the woods, and she was about to drink some of the liquid when she stopped herself. But she didn't stop herself because she realized that the drink might belong to someone else. Oh, no. That never even entered her mind. She stopped to pull out her Bio-probe scanner so she could check the chemical composition of the liquid. She ran the scanner across the great, huge mug first. It showed: 90 percent water, 9 percent ethyl alcohol, and trace amounts of carbon dioxide, hops, and barley.

"Beer!" Goldilox exclaimed. "Here on this God-forsaken, backwoods planet in the middle of nowhere. Hell, maybe there's intelligent life here after all."

Next Goldilox ran her Bio-probe across the middle-sized mug. It too was beer, but the alcohol content was slightly lower, and it had one-third fewer calories. She concluded from this data that it was probably less filling.

Then she scanned the little, tiny mug and found an alcohol content of only 1.2 percent.

"Near beer is queer beer," Goldilox sneered.

But now more thirsty than ever, Goldilox eyed the three beers. The little, tiny beer was clearly too weak for an intrepid intergalactic explorer like herself, while the great, huge beer might be too fattening. But the middle-sized beer was "just right" for a girl watching her weight, so she chug-a-lugged. Then she belched, wiped her mouth on the tablecloth and decided to drink the great, huge beer too -- to hell with the diet. Afterwards, she looked over at the sickening little mug of near beer and spit at it contemptuously.

Goldilox then entered an adjoining room in the cottage where she found three wooden chairs lined up in a row. There was a great, huge chair, a middle-sized chair and a tiny, little chair. But instead of facing a multimedia entertainment center or something similar, the chairs faced a large window with a boring view of the ugly woods.

Goldilox decided to try out the chairs to test their sturdiness and comfort index. It never occurred to her that you shouldn't sit in a chair that belongs to someone else, unless you first ask permission. She examined the big chair and could hardly even reach up to it. As she tried to pull herself into it, the chair toppled over on her.

"Friggin' oversized freak chair. Who lives here, a tennis line judge?" she said as she rubbed her sore head.

Next she tried to sit in the tiny, little chair, but it was so small that her less-than-tiny hiney acted like a wedge and split the chair to pieces, and she fell to the floor.

"That's exactly the kind of workmanship I'd expect from a near beer-drinking bunch of aliens who haven't even discovered mass production yet, let alone a decent entertainment system," Goldilox grumbled.

Lastly, she tried out the medium-sized chair and pronounced it "just right." She sat in it for about two minutes before she became bored from lack of multimedia stimuli and decided to continue exploring the cottage.

Goldilox climbed a spiral staircase to a loft where she found three wooden beds in a row -- a big one, a medium-sized one, and a little one. Feeling rather sleepy by now, she crawled into the first bed -- the big one -- and snuggled. She never stopped even for a moment to consider that the bed must have been the private property of another sentient being. All she thought about was her own comfort.

Goldilox soon decided that the big bed was too hard, so she carelessly tossed off the covers and jumped into the middle one. Her first impression was that it was too soft, but before she could make up her mind, she felt a heavy, gelatinous mass move up her throat. She vomited all over the bed. Naturally, she decided to abandon that bed for a cleaner one. The little bed was definitely not "just right," but it was the only one left. She had to scrunch up into the fetal position to fit into it, but she was too tired to care. She cuddled up, passed some gas and fell fast asleep.

A short time later the three owners of the cottage returned from their daily jog. They were unusual creatures, bipedal and somewhat humanoid but covered with thick, dark fur. Goldilox would later say they looked a lot like the long-extinct earth creatures called bears. The three Arctosian bears were hot and tired from their exercise and they were dying for a nice wet beer, so they rushed to their tables. The great, huge bear peered down into his empty mug.

"Hey, somebody's been messin' with my beer!" said the great, huge bear in his great, gruff voice.

"Somebody has been messing with my beer and drank the whole darn thing," said the medium-sized bear in her medium-sized voice.

"Somebody's been messing with my beer and it looks like there's a big hocker floating in it," said the tiny, little bear in his tiny, little voice.

The three bears then went into their living room where the great, huge bear immediately noticed his great, huge chair knocked over.

"Somebody's been messin' with my chair!" said the great, huge bear in his great, gruff voice.

"Brilliant deduction!" said the middle-sized bear.

Then the tiny, little bear noticed his chair crushed to pieces.

"Somebody's been messing with my tiny, little chair," he said tearfully in his tiny, little voice. "And whoever it was must have had a great, huge ass."

Now the three bears decided they had better give their whole home a thorough search. They went upstairs to their loft where the Papa Bear was the first to notice his rumpled bed.

"Somebody's been messin' around in my bed," said the Papa Bear as he turned to his wife.

"Well, don't look at me," said the Mama Bear. "I wouldn't be caught dead there."

"Well, there are a lot of women who would," said the Papa Bear in his great, gruff voice.

"Sure," said the Mama Bear, "pretty, young girls are always dropping in out of nowhere just to get into the bed of the legendary stud of Arctos..."

"Okay, cool it," said the Baby Bear.

Then the Mama Bear noticed her bed was rumpled.

"Somebody's been messing in my bed...," she said, as she pulled back the covers from her vomit-encrusted mattress. "...and I do mean messing."

"Oh, gross," said the Baby Bear. "You mean, somebody's been barfing in your bed."

His laugh was cut short as he noticed his own bed. It was inhabited by an ugly, golden-haired alien that was fast asleep.

"Hey, somebody's been messing in my bed and she's still there."

The three bears gathered around the small bed and growled menacingly. Goldilox awoke, her big, blue eyes popping wide open in terror. She sprang from the bed, and as the covers flew up, a cloud of gas worse than anything ever used in warfare was released into the faces of the three bears. They screamed in unison.

"Beer Farts."
"BEER FARTS."
"beer farts."

The Baby Bear fell to the floor, rolling and gagging. The Mama Bear swooned on the big bed. The Papa Bear ran from the room gasping. Goldilox took advantage of the diversion to make an escape by jumping out of the window. She ran and ran through mile after mile of forest. Eventually, by dumb luck, she stumbled upon a member of the scouting party and was reunited with the group.


Now, if this were just some stupid fairy tale about some ordinary bears in an ordinary forest on earth, the story would end here. But these were no ordinary bears -- or even bears at all, for that matter -- and their home was no ordinary cottage, their chairs no ordinary chairs, their beds no ordinary beds. Their beer was rather ordinary, but the wooden mugs it came in were truly far out.

You see, these so-called bears were the unique caretakers of the planet Arctos, and this house -- the only one on the entire planet -- was the central nervous system that controlled a complex planetary eco-system in which every single object was alive and dependent on every other living thing. As Goldilox had guessed, even the wooden cottage itself was a living organism. So were the chairs, the beds, and the mugs. At the top of the Arctosian ecological chain were these three creatures, each a different size and each in control of a different aspect of the ecology.

Unlike humans, these were very sensitive creatures, and when Goldilox invaded their privacy and abused their personal property, they were very upset. All three had Arctosian bear versions of a nervous breakdown.

The result of all this disruption and trauma was that the bears neglected to perform several seemingly insignificant functions as caretakers. However, no function on Arctos was insignificant, because any act these creatures performed or failed to perform could have repercussions throughout the eco-system. And that's exactly what happened. The three bears' minor mistakes spread chaos down the chain, and eventually, every living thing on the beautiful planet withered and died. When the second Israeli expedition returned five years later, they found Arctos barren of life. It was worse than the Sinai. Goldilox was court martialed and lived unhappily ever after.


Now, there's a moral to this story for space explorers and scientists everywhere, and it is this: never, ever enter the home of an alien being uninvited. It just isn't polite.