One of our final writing projects for the year included these 3-paragraph essays, entered in Linda Joy Singleton's writing contest. Children were challenged to describe an alien pet in 200 words or less, and they rose to the challenge!! We continued to practice writing process skills, gained additional experience using a thesaurus, and competently used our available technology. This writing project aligned with the following Pennsylvania State Standards:My pet named Ben is as weird as can be on Earth. He has ears up to two feet tall and a tail that’s one foot long and is two feet high and three feet wide. His fur is white and the vets say he’s part dog and part rabbit. I guess I should feed Ben cabbage.The vets say that these pets are only located on planet Garth and they are called Garthons. Ben loves toothpaste and he also eats some weird food that the vet gave to him. It’s called garthio. The ingredients are saliva, carrots, cabbage, and cheese. At night Ben sleeps in my bed because he’s afraid of the dark but he is always in a playful mood.Remember when I said Ben had ears up to two feet? Well, while using his ears he flew from planet Garth to planet Earth. I should also tell you about planet Garth. It is full of the world’s largest vegetables. Garthons lived in 10 feet tall carrots and they had trees up to 7 feet tall. Garth seems like a nice place to live in from Ben’s point of view. That’s my story about my weird pet named Ben. I found an alien one day while I was walking on planet Dahdgekdhd. The thing said it was Bob. Bob had feathers that felt like metal. You could even see his bones. His head was blue, green, red, and orange. He had a rainbow Afro with a comb in his hair. He said he could run over 73.9 miles an hour. He said he ate mice, rats, worms, bunnies, and flies that are as big as a 3-year-old person. He showed me how he eats them. He eats the mice, rats, bunnies, and flies by chasing them and putting his foot on their wings, tails, or ears. Then he keeps on hitting them with the comb until all the blood and guts come out. Bob also doesn’t sleep.Bob’s planet has posters, stickers, and other things about chickens. They have 777,777,777,777 rules, but the number one rule is you have to like chickens. But I always had everything dealing with chickens. Bob came from a space ship because I wanted him to visit. Bob is my cousin’s wife’s aunt’s uncle twice removed. He said, “I can stay for a year.” One year and 12 seconds later he was gone.My alien pet came from a planet called Zhickabefratoyelgetun. My pet’s name is Joe. Joe looks like a snake and is the size of an electric eel. Joe even has twenty flexible legs that allow him to climb up walls and stick to ceilings. Joe can also crawl on you and play with you. Joe is colored blue with a little bit of fur at the bottom of his body.Joe is from a rare species called the Welcrut. Joe lived in an underground cave. Joe loves small places. Joe’s favorite food is pizza. Joe gets pizza by making it in his body. Joe eats breakfast at 7:30, lunch at 12:00, hoyled at 3:30 and dinner at 7:00.Zhickabefratoyelgetun is a planet that is like a huge forest. Zhickabefratoyelgetun is a place for many different species to live. The species of the Welcrut live there, and so does the Gewzac and the Revbad. Joe got to earth by crash landing a little spaceship after a meteorite hit his planet. That is how I got to keep an alien pet from another planet. Hi, I am Eric and I have an alien pet! My pet alien’s species name is Monklog. Monklogs come from the planet called Omicron Persia 8. Monklog is such a hard name to say, so I call my Monklog, Bob. Bob has really big feet (his feet are the size of a grown man), Bob’s body is 1 foot bigger than a mouse. Also Bob has a sticky tongue.Bob only eats ants. Bob gets his food by using his huge feet to kick up the ground, so ants come flying out. Then Bob uses his stretchy tongue to grab all the ants that were in the air. Monklogs live in wet logs. Monklogs only need water, ants, and a log to live.Omicron Persia 8 (the Monklog’s home planet) is damp and ugly, like a log. Omicron Persia 8 has about 1 billion gallons of water and more than 100 trillion ants live there. Omicron Persia 8 also has the best spa in the universe! I got him when my parents went to the spa on Omicron Persia 8. Monklogs are sold for $50. So while my parents were there they bought one. That is my alien pet! I have an alien pet, a shirluckle. Its name is Uniqual (une-eek-ul). Shirluckles are purple fuzz balls. They weigh from 2 to 8 ounces and are 6 inches tall. Shirluckles have silver talons, a lavender nose, and red eyes.Shirluckles eat using their eyes! They find something to eat, which can be anything, though they’re partial to wax, and emit waves that gather any taste and/or energy stored in the food. Then they reabsorb the waves, their way of ‘eating’ the food. Shirluckles need fire to live, the same way we need air. I light a fire in the fireplace every night, and Uniqual sleeps there. Sharlarm, Uniqual’s home world, is a fire planet. It is filled with fire that the shirluckles breathe. There is a wax house where they ‘eat’ wax, and lava balls where everyone sleeps. One day, Uniqual was exploring in space. It was attacked by another alien, but couldn’t fight back. To escape, it crash-landed on Earth, but destroyed its ship. When I discovered it, it was almost dead. Somehow I knew what it needed. I brought it home and lit a fire in the fireplace. I’m glad about what happened because Uniqual became my pet.Hi, I am Goolou. I am named Goolou because I am made of goo and my original name was Lou. I have hands that are like mittens and no feet because I slide. I am pink even though I am a boy. I have eyes like black dots but I see very well.I don’t eat. I only drink water. It is kind of odd how I drink. I drink by lying in a bowl of water and my body absorbs the water. I love the cold so in the house is like twenty fans.I once lived on a planet in space. It was called Goo Galore. It was called Goo Galore because there were only goo aliens and no people. One day my planet got taken over by other aliens. I escaped in an escape pod. I flew it as fast as I could. I landed at the first planet I saw and it was Earth. I crash-landed in a yard and then someone came out, saw me, and took care of me. Now I have a great life and owner.Cuties are very cute. Cuties have soft, furry, long, pink hair with baby blue dots. Their eyes are light pink, shiny, and glow in the dark. Boy cuties have blue, long, furry fur and light pink. Cuties are not found everywhere. They are mostly found in warm climates. Cuties have sharp teeth. Cuties do not eat meat. They mostly eat vegetables. They find their food on plants and trees. Cuties like to sleep in the daytime but eat and watch TV in the night. Cuties like to sleep in closets. Cuties have to be in warm places or they get frustrated. If a Cutie gets mad their hair sticks up. To calm a Cutie down you have to cover it. Be careful it might bite!Cuties are from the planet Venus. Then one day a small Cutie jumped into a space ship. When the astronauts got to Earth the Cutie jumped out and landed in my backyard. I took her into my bedroom. Then one day while I was at school my mom went into my room and saw it in my closet. When I got home she was playing with it. I knew I could keep it.My pet’s name is Puffy. She is a Floogalast. Puffy is from Talyaban. Puffy has a rare color. It’s jocome(between red and pink). Puffy has smooth fur, purple eyes and three inch feet. She has a mane, which is purple. Her tail’s puffy and her body looks like a banana. Puffy likes to eat hair. She gets it by begging me to get it out of the brush or when I’m asleep she’ll pull it out of my head. Occasionally Puffy will eat bugs. Floogasts do get mood-swings so it’s important that they’ve got their space. Puffy is spoiled. She has a doghouse, a mini-bed, windows, and T.V.Like I said before Puffy comes from the planet Talyaban. Floogasts naturally ate bugs. The only thing different is the trees are different colors. I got Puffy yesterday. She was begging to come in. I found a letter in a string around her neck that gave me this information. I don’t know who (or what) dropped her off, but I knew I couldn’t send her to a shelter because they’d turn her into scientists, who would be poking her with sticks and stuff. “Puffy off the…” “CRASH!” Got to go clean up!I once found an alien pet named Wheezer. He is 6 feet 5 and weighs 225 lbs. He came from the planet Jukannove. Wheezer likes to eat pasta, meat and cake. His friends are still stuck on Jukannove because Jukannove has a ring around it and if you hit the ring Jukannove will explode. Then the ring started to grow and people from Jukannove couldn’t get off. Wheezer has big blue eyes and real big arms. His skin is blue. Wheezer has no hair, but has a goatee.Wheezer likes to eat pasta, meat and cake. Wheezer gets its food by when the winter comes he hides his food under ground. Wheezer can’t go out in the winter. Wheezer has to sleep upside down because he needs blood in his head to think. Everyday Wheezer needs to have water every hour because he can get dehydrated.Wheezer is from Jukannove. People on Jukannove sleep upside down to think. People on Jukannove also eat with their hands. Jukannove has a black ring around the planet. Wheezer got here by a jetpack. I’m going to treat Wheezer with a lot respect and take care of him. Today I found a Persocom by my house. She looks like a teenager with long blonde hair that has two braids in the front. She’s at least 1ft taller than me with chestnut eyes. But she speaks Japanese and Korean! I asked her for her name one day and she didn’t know. I thought up the Japanese name, Yuki.After taking Yuki to lunch, I realized that she eats like an Oriental person. She eats sushi, noodles, Chop Suey, seafood, and A TON of rice. Yuki says that on her old planet she got Oriental food. At my house she lives in the guest room (that she loves). Yuki says she used to live in a camp where she was cramped.Yuki was created on the planet Nihon when Japanese woman got tired of getting their husbands to do house work. Yuki says her owner was a nice, young Japanese girl named Satomi, who treated her like a regular resident. The planet contains only about 80 Koreans and 600 Japanese. Yuki came to my planet by accidentally tripping in a ship headed here. One day I hope more Persocoms “accidentally” come to Earth so that you can have one too! My pet, Hermie, has 30 eyes. He’s a purplish brown color. He has black spots all over. He has 44 legs and comes from a place called Migopoliey. He has rows of sharp teeth but he only eats ink. For he is a Magoof.To get ink he takes the shape of a book and when you put that book in your desk he shoots out a long, slimy tongue and grabs a pen. Then acid shoots from his teeth and spills the ink out. The Magoof needs cold spaces. He comes from Migopoliey.In Migopoliey the trees are rainbow. Nobody ever saw the colorful planet because it is 15,000,000 miles from Pluto. The reason Hermie left Migopoliey was because an alien came and was going to cut down a tree. Hermie climbed up it and wouldn’t come down until the alien left. Well the alien wasn’t going to stand for that and cut it down anyway. Then he picked up the tree and threw it to earth. Then Hermie came to live with me. I know it is a lot of work buying liters of ink, but Hermie is like no other pet. I would want no other pet.I have discovered a new species of pet, space spheres. My space sphere is called Akio. Space spheres can get from one inch tall to seven feet tall! They have no arms or legs until they get to three years old. Space spheres have very large eyes that will capture your heart at first sight!My space sphere, Akio, eats mostly fruit and vegetables. She gets her food by simply jumping up on the counter and getting it. Space spheres have living conditions. One condition is they must have a two feet by three feet pillow to sleep on. Space spheres also need to have their food next to their pillow for the first year that they live with you. Space spheres need to have a special shampoo and conditioner.Space spheres come from the planet Akiko. Akiko is a cold planet. Their oceans are usually made of blue raspberry juice. Akio was on a field trip to the planet Zooka, but she got separated and lost! So she came here. She couldn’t go home, so I found her. I promised to show her Earth’s customs and to take care of her until it was time for her to go. One day I was in the park when I saw the cutest creature on the ground. I named him Charlie. He was as long as an index finger and as tall as a toothpick. He’s sandy colored. I sat him in my hand. And like that it came to me… there was no animal on earth like this. He looked like a dog but was smaller than a mouse.I declared him my pet. Charlie eats a lot of food. There’s a thing that confuses me-he only eats sugar. He sure seems to like that sugary sweetness. Charlie gets his food at stores. I had to make changes so he could survive. I made a room just for him. He needs the heat on higher than normal. He also needs a bed full of water.He is from Zionthero. The planet looked like Earth. It was trillions of galaxies away. He flew himself to Earth and got here by a triangular object. Zionthero was all white and blue. Charlie saved himself by flying here before his home planet blew up. Now Charlie lives with me and gets everything he needs. I am very happy I have a pet like Charlie. My Alien Pet’s name is Zooka, and she is 6 feet, 5 inches. A Plotay is her species. Zooka has 14 eyes. She has 5 feet, and 14 toes, and has lots of hair that I put up in all kinds of hairdos. Zooka is pink, Zooka lives under my bed.The food Zooka eats is all kinds of fish, worms, but flies are mostly what Zooka eats. How Zooka gets her food is by catching it. My Alien Pet sleeps under my bed or outside. A couple of Zooka’s conditions are she has to be careful of the sun because if she gets burnt then she can get injured. Another condition is when I go fishing I have to take Zooka. Those are Zooka’s conditions.Zooka came from Clopsy. Clopsy is where tall Aliens go so they don’t get made fun of. Clopsy has lots of dark places. That’s mostly about the planet Zooka came from. How Zooka got here was once a rocket came to Earth because the regular aliens attacked Zooka’s planet and I was the one who found her so I kept her. That is how I got Zooka. 