The Boeing 727 that went missing in Africa in May was found this morning in Jessica Lynch's backyard in Palestine, W.V.

"I went out to milk Black Bird and there it was. I almost fell over," said Deadra Lynch, Jessica's mother. "We sure must have been sleeping real sound last night because Greg and I never heard a thing and those big planes are usually pretty loud."

Lynch is the Army private held prisoner during the Iraq war and rescued by Special Forces from an Iraqi hospital. Her daring retrieval in the middle of the night and her wan smile in the first photo released after she was back in Army hands won the hearts of Americans and provided the Pentagon with a much needed propaganda coup.

An international hunt for the Boeing 727 had been underway since May 25, when it took off without permission from the airport in Luanda, Angola and immediately vanished. Authorities were concerned that the airplane might fall into the hands of terrorists who would use it in an attack similar to the assault on the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001.

In Washington, a spokeswoman confirmed that the airplane in the Lynch's backyard was, in fact, the missing Boeing 727. "The tail number and serial number match that of the airplane stolen in Africa," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for herself and her agency.

Local police and FBI agents cordoned off the Lynch backyard and restricted reporters and television crews to the Lynch front yard, where they thoroughly trampled the peonies. The plane's tail could be seen towering over the back of the Lynch house. A line of crows roosted on the top most point of the tail.

When asked how the airplane made it to her backyard, Mrs. Lynch said that perhaps it landed along the low ridge behind the house and then taxied to the backyard. The single-story ranch style house looks down from the ridge onto a bucolic valley dotted with cattle and tobacco fields.

"It would have to come in that way," she said. "But it's been raining a lot and the ground is soft, so you'd think there'd be tracks. I didn't see any tracks."

At the Palestine Diner, reporters pressed the waitress for an alternate explanation. The woman, who gave her name as Ms. Merle, shrugged and said, "Everybody in these parts knows It was one of those UFO alien kind of things, like where they just sort of drop it in from above silent like."

Ms. Merle said there had been several incidents in the past where cattle had been killed in the fields and mutilated in the way aliens do or crops had been cut down in odd patterns in the middle of the night.

"There was a case a few years ago where Eddie Oxbow saw a flying saucer come down and land and these little things got out and looked around." she said. "Eddie said the saucer was real quiet, but you have to remember this was right after his Gloria run off to Morgantown, so we didn't pay much mind," she added.

An FBI spokesman in Huntington, W.V. said that a team of forensic specialists would be sent to search the airplane for fingerprints and DNA samples.

Separately, Ms. Merle, the Palestine Diner waitress, said that a tall, dark man wearing a cashmere sweater, tans slacks and Gucci loafers had eaten a breakfast of pancakes and home fries at the diner that morning.

"I knew they were Guccis because I saw a picture of them in a magazine once," she said. "He said he was a Hollywood producer and that he was going to make a movie in Palestine. He said he was going to put us on the map once and for all."