Etc...

Thank goodness you're here

"Help!" the desperate-sounding caller to the Houston Police Department pleaded earlier this month. "My baby is stuck in the sewer!" She achieved her objective: Thirty-five people and 13 pieces of apparatus from four different fire stations raced to the scene and pulled off the desired rescue before any harm could come to the little one. A heart-warming story , right? Not to city officials, who issued her a ticket and may yet haul her into court for a trial that could result in a sentence of six months in jail. No, it's not that the authorities are cold and unfeeling. They just think they were taken advantage of. The ticket, you see, was for making a false report , after it was determined that the same resident - or others in her family - had phoned 911 three previous times with the same appeal and basically been brushed off. That's because the earlier calls correctly identified the helpless infant as what the firefighters discovered when they arrived: a pet cat whose name is ... Baby. What's more, committing so many resources left other areas of the city underprotected. Said Capt. Keith Ellery of the fire department, "It's not the type of rescue we normally do, but in this particular [case] we felt kind of compelled to help them out."