Sheriff Jim Alderden has been called many things since his department began handling the balloon boy fiasco that unfolded in the skies over Colorado last week: incompetent, a socialist, a liar, “Barney Fife.” Even fat and bald.

But few would accuse him of lacking a sense of humor.

In his newsletter, the Bulls-Eye, the Larimer County sheriff reflected on a week of Richard Heene madness and how it provoked people around the world to e-mail him with a cornucopia of harebrained suggestions, armchair criticisms and even flirtatious compliments of his manly appearance. (“You are good looking, a ‘real man’ … you have a strong voice, you dress well,” wrote an admirer from Finland.) Hmmmmm...

Before the world learned that young Falcon Heene was not, in fact, aboard his dad’s helium-filled flying saucer, a number of people e-mailed Alderden with ideas about how to get it down safely. One was to attach a huge net to three or four helicopters so they could snag the craft like an errant butterfly. Someone else (who greatly overestimated the resources of the Sheriff’s Office) suggested using a Harrier jet. One housewife suggested sprinkling the UFO with water to weight it down, a trick she learned from her 10-year-old child who used a squirt gun to retrieve a balloon from the tall ceiling in her house.

Just to prove that crazy people don’t reserve their off-topic rants to public Internet forums, several people wrote the sheriff about atrocities that were tangential to balloon boy, but which nevertheless demanded justice. Consider this e-mail, about a garish stars-and-stripes shirt the sheriff wore at one press conference:

“Sheriff, you recently appeared on TV wearing a shirt made with the U.S. flag print. The aesthetic hideousness of a denim shirt interwoven with the Stars and Stripes notwithstanding, the wearing of the flag as clothing is a violation of the U.S. flag code. I will encourage any federal investigators working with you on the balloon boy case to charge you with crimes against the flag if that shirt is worn again. I suggest you donate it to the poor. The poor may also be in violation when wearing it, but at least they'll be clothed this winter and probably not shown on world-wide video representing American law officials.”

Another correspondent complained that his or her partner was “disabled for 48 hours in grief” over the hoax and wanted the Heenes charged with fraud and terrorism.

Here are a few more from "wing-nuts," as the sheriff called them, presenting "a lot of gibberish," if not problematic English usage and spelling.

"I need to speak with Mr. Heene as I know that the reptilians that he speaks of exist and are here on this planet right damn now. They are called draconians and they are currently putting down there draconian measures and that is why the economy is so bad. I need to speak with him A.S.A.P. Please tell him to contact me for the draconians must be stopped!!!!!!!!!! May YAHWEH Bless the true huemanity."

Here's another: "Go after those Heene family, Sheriff Alderden. But, when the US Government makes a hoax on covering the reports of civil rights violations, then let it go. Too big for small time people like you to bring to justice the big shots. Jesse Jackson, and others like him won’t protest the US Government because I am a white man, and I found out what the Justice Dept. and the EEOC do to segregate news reports so the Industrialists are not covered on civil rights violations. Sure on thefts, copy right infringements, bribery, age discrimination for white males, you will hear from time to time, but not when a black or woman is harassed, like happened in 1996 where 300 women were reported on National TV for civil rights violations by the auto maker Mitsubishi. Then a few months later, after I complained to the Justice Dept. to pick on a US Industrialist, out came Texaco with eight blacks discriminated against, and that was in the news all over the nation, but you never heard it was because I entered a lawsuit, that proved this was going on all the time. You should hear every year something like those reports, but only in 1996 did you hear. The courts dismissed my lawsuit without comment, when all around the lawsuit proved valid. A refinery of Texaco was bombed, and so the US Gov, President Clinton, was frightened that if the full truth was told that riots would follow. China would also laugh in his face. The entire world would laugh in Clinton’s face. He already had enough problems with Monica. He could handle no more."

In a demeanor more befitting a Western sheriff from a Zane Grey novel than that of a modern law enforcement officer tempted by the lure of TV lights, Alderden notes almost in passing that he’d rather be on his horse than appear on Dr. Phil (which he was invited to do, but declined).

“You get the gist,” he concludes. “Lots and lots of emails. Lots and lots of phone calls from across the United States, Canada, Germany, Japan, Australia, Fiji and other countries. I particularly liked the caller who had proof that Hillary Clinton was a space alien. At least that caller had some credibility.”

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