2003-04-22 - Gainesville, FL - Cigar

Elongated, orange object traveling south

I had finished preparing Mom's flower bed (yup, it took me this long to finish hehe) and was laying on the grass trying to recover becuse i was seriously overheated, so I was just laying there watching fireflies and shooting stars go by. I was about to go inside when I saw what i thought was a very large meteor burning up. I saw an orange flare suddenly appear in the sky but instead of burning up it slowed down and passed over (I was still laying down) I could see it was orange, glowing, and elongated. Kinda like a cylinder or cigar. I yelled "What the hell is that?" and I must have sounded upset becuse my mother looked up and asked if it as an airplane and I told her I saw it enter the atmosphere and if it was a plane we'd only see lights blinking. We watched it until it was too far away to see and it flew south in a slow (slower then even a single prop plane) curving zig zag. It just slowly went from left to right as it went forward. My heart's still racing. I've seen a lot of strange lights out here in the past, but this is the first time I actually saw a shape. Though listed as Gainesville, this was actually 10 miles west of Gainesville