This story is a bit flimsy in my opinion. It starts out with an alien officer making the mistake of ignoring some approaching humans in vehicle. The vehicle was described by the alien as "one of the natives' mechanical geese". It has a wings and a whirling tractor screw at its forward end. The best I can come up with is that this is a helicopter with some sort of digging device on the front.

The aliens apparently look exactly like humans as a result of convergent evolution. Internally they look very different, but externally they look similar enough to pass undetected if they enter society and take jobs as barbers and taxi drivers.

That's a pretty fanciful idea. It's used a lot on scifi TV shows because it's cheap and easy to make an alien by adding some bumps to their nose. It's far more difficult to excuse in a story since it's just as easy to have the aliens look extremely different.

But then, if they looked different then the aliens wouldn't be able to blend in so easily.

The aliens are here to mine the earth. In years past they have always done this mining in areas near hicks who would not be believed. That way any accidental sightings would be dismissed by the rest of society.

I particularly enjoyed how one of the alien women (who is an "officer's comfort") go out and meet a human and tell him that she was from Venus. She did this because no scientist would ever believe that convergent evolution would produce something that looked like a human if that evolution took place on Venus.

So, they basically hid themselves in plain sight and had contingency plans for making the story unbelievable.

Ultimately, the original alien officer who let himself be seen too easily was demoted and punished. The punishment consisted of him being forced to become a comedian.