LOS ANGELES (AP) They've faced aliens, men in black, fetishists, demons, fat-sucking vampires, and more, but the actual appearance of a gnome in their midst caught the cast and crew of the long-running FOX series The X-Files completely offguard.

	Series regulars Anderson, Harwood, Haglund, Duchovny, Lea, Braidwood, and Pileggi could only stare in disbelief as a gnome (third from right) invaded the X-Files set.

    Actor Dean Haglund described the experience as "unreal." "One minute I'm standing there at the table, spacing out 'cause Laurie Holden's going on and on again about how much fun blondes have. Hey, I would know. Anyway, the next minute she's gone and there's this grinning gnome right where she'd been standing."

    Bruce Harwood, who plays idealistic journalist John Byers on the series and co-starred with Haglund in the recently cancelled spinoff The Lone Gunmen, explained, "We're all supposed to be playing characters who've seen so much that virtually nothing can surprise them. Nevertheless, when she showed up at the conference table--when she just elbowed her way up between Nick [Lea] and Tom [Braidwood]--I think my jaw dropped."

    "I don't know how long she'd been there before I noticed her," said Nick Lea. "Krycek, my character, has a prosthetic left arm, so I had my real arm behind my back and I didn't even feel it when she grabbed my elbow."

    Actor and assistant director Tom Braidwood, another victim of the Lone Gunmen cancellation, saw this "visitation" as part of a larger matter.

    "Although I think it's good when a gnome can get into the public eye occasionally, I can't help thinking that this is the wrong kind of publicity. It could have repercussions for gnomes, ewoks, leprechauns, and trolls everywhere."

    Series creator and executive producer Chris Carter was not reachable for comment; sources on the set explained that he has secluded himself in an undisclosed location for the duration of the summer, as a security measure following a rash of rotten-fruit throwings and hexings.

    Sources stressed that the gnome had nothing to do with the halfhearted attacks on Carter; those are being made by infuriated fans in response to the most recent new episode, "Existence," which was the final installment for the eighth season.

    "I thought she seemed pretty harmless," said Gillian Anderson, the series' lead actress. "She followed me around for an hour, but I guess the attention was more flattering than annoying."

    Co-star Mitch Pileggi agreed. "We were all startled when she showed up, but she more or less stayed out of the way."

    Later that afternoon, the gnome reappeared on a different set. She reportedly took a look around, then walked right past the crew into the apartment and sat down on the arm of Mulder's couch.

"I'm in Mulder's apartment," the gnome reportedly announced at least fifteen times during the filming of one scene.

    "I looked at [Director] Rob [Bowman] to see if he was going to get her out of there, but he just gestured for me to keep going with the scene," said David Duchovny. "I guess she was out of frame and he figured it didn't really matter."

    "It's not really a precedent you want to establish," Bowman said, "but I can't really say it was that bad having her on set. We'd been shooting some tense scenes all day, and somehow having a gnome around just lightened everybody up."

    Bowman then added, "It wasn't until she bit David that I decided to have everybody stand around for a while so she'd get bored and leave."

    Duchovny described his wound as "nonfatal," but he was not the only victim of a gnome attack.

    After she'd been around for most of the day, the gnome wandered into a scene between Annabeth Gish and Robert Patrick.

    "By this time people were more or less getting used to her being around, although that was actually the first I'd seen of her," Patrick reported. "She just kinda looked up at me and her eyes got real big for a minute. Then this huge grin spread across her face and she scurried away."

	Recent cast addition Annabeth Gish never saw it coming.

    A few minutes later, Gish and Patrick were going through some dialogue when the gnome rushed up behind Gish with a knife.

    "She came out of nowhere. I heard this shriek and a half a second later she'd knocked Annabeth to the floor," Patrick explained. "As soon as I realized what was happening, I grabbed the gnome and pulled her off of Annabeth, but when I wrestled the knife away from her, I saw that there was already blood on the blade."

    Patrick added, "Then she bit me."

    Chaos set in as everyone scrambled to get to Gish and to get the gnome and the knife away.

    "Suddenly people were everywhere," said the set decorator. "Someone was trying to get Annabeth to talk. Someone else was yelling for an ambulance. The script girl must've completely panicked, because I heard her scream, 'My God, she's dead!'"

    The gnome, who was being dragged out of the room by Patrick and a cameraman, reportedly shouted in response, "She's not dead, she's pining!"

    "She'd seemed fine earlier, but by this point she was clearly delusional," Patrick said.

A pair of handcuffs from the prop department came in handy until the real authorities arrived.

    Gish was rushed to a hospital while the gnome was restrained, although by this time she was cheerful again and no longer seemed to pose a threat to anyone on the set. Someone retrieved a pair of handcuffs from the prop department, and Patrick and Anderson volunteered to watch the now-tame gnome until the real authorities arrived.

    Animal control officials advised that she be put down so that she could be tested for rabies, but by this time the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Gnomes had been alerted. ASPCG spokesperson Andrew Braun pressured the authorities to simply observe the gnome before taking any drastic measures.

    Gnomologist Erin Paseka, author of Gnomes in the Mist, has lived with gnomes in their natural habitat for an extended period of time.

    "What we're seeing here," Paseka said, "is a complete misunderstanding of gnomes' behavior. The biting is almost never an actual act of aggression; far more often it's affectionate or playful. As for the drool found on Mulder's couch, that's not necessarily a sign of rabies. Gnomes have extremely short attention spans, and they can't really help drooling in their sleep."

    The gnome has thus far showed no signs of rabies, to the relief of Duchovny and Patrick, and doctors at the hospital soon determined that Gish's wound was more superficial than the cast and crew had thought.

    Despite Gish's prognosis for a quick and complete recovery, series writer Frank Spotnitz hinted that he sees the incident as an opportunity to kill off Gish's character, FBI Special Agent Monica "Good Vibrations" Reyes.

    "Believe me, I was very relieved to hear that Annabeth is doing well," said Spotnitz. "But we've got this great footage of a real live psycho attack, and to be completely honest, nobody really likes Reyes anyway."

    "Then again," Lea added, "they'd have to okay it with Chris [Carter], and Chris has a strict policy of keeping unpopular characters around for as long as possible while forcing popular ones into obscurity, if not actually killing them off for no particular reason."

    The FOX network now has plans for a primetime special entitled When Gnomes Attack.

Copyright 2001 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed unless the gnomes say it's okay.