There was a big metal spaceship on Thurstaston Common. Everybody wanted to see inside but each time you got closer it began to shake. Except for one morning…
Rebecca was exploring with her GPS. As she approached some dense woodland she stopped dead.
“Spaceship! What?” she whispered.
As she carefully touched the door, out slithered and wriggled a slimy, three-eyed, wrinkly alien – with a banana gun. Rebecca was so scared she dropped her GPS.
“Who are you!?” she asked.
The green, gooey creature explained that he was a heathland police alien with an extraordinary time travelling spaceship. He needed someone to help him because the trees on the edge of the Common were threatening the heathland. The trees needed to be cut down because heathland is more endangered than woodland.
“Let me show you what the Common used to be like” said the alien.
Rebecca clambered into his time machine and they whooshed through space, back to a hundred years earlier. It was magical – there were hardly any trees and the villagers’ cattle and sheep grazed on the heathland, nibbling on bushes and young trees.
“Wow! Why isn’t it like this anymore?” she asked.
“Well, people stopped using the heathland for their animals, so the silver birch trees just kept on growing, taking over the Common.
“We need to get back and stop those nasty trees and get some animals!” exclaimed Rebecca.
They ran into the machine and flew back to the present time.
The trees knew something was about to happen. The sky grew dark as they stretched out their scrawny branches and blocked the sunlight. Rebecca and the alien gasped.
“We need to get started!” they shouted together.
They grabbed some axes and began to cut trees down. A dog and a squirrel looked on in amazement.
Eventually, helped by the alien’s special powers, Rebecca and her new friend got rid of the evil trees.
She thanked the alien and said “I’ll never forget you!”.
“I’ll never forget you too!” he replied in his weird, intergalactic voice.
Rebecca ran home to tell her mum everything. “We need more animals mum! To help eat the silver birch seeds and keep the Common as heathland!”
“If you say so dear”, said her mum. “I suggest you talk to the National Trust, they look after the Common”.
And that’s exactly what Rebecca did…