This Week in the Mercury
Thursday, October 15, 2009
News Quick! How Do You Rescue a Child in a Runaway Balloon?
Posted by Sarah Mirk on Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 12:40 PM
The top story on CNN right now is a real-life Up... if Up was not cute and had a potentially tragic ending.
According to CNN, a six-year-old boy in Colorado climbed into the mylar "balloon-like experimental aircraft" his parents were building in the backyard and untied the rope. He's currently 7,000 feet in the air, riding in a thin plywood box that won't withstand "any kind of crash at all."
Reserving for later the question of what the hell kind of parents build an enticing version of every kid's dream and then tether it unsafely in the back yard, the main problem facing authorities is how to get the poor kid down out of the air. This whole situation is crazy and it seems like no one has any good plan—right now the authorities are contacting a balloon company for help, for Chrissake. So, any ideas?
UPDATE! Balloon lands empty; search on for missing boy.
UPDATE UPDATE! Horray! In a magical twist, the boy was found hiding at home. That is the best possibly ending to this story, unless the family is asked to dramatically reenact the balloon boy incident on a reprisal of its role on Wife Swap.
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