Slow News Day

Remember this, the El Paso Times article I bitched about back in May when I was visiting my parents? Remember how I mentioned that the El Paso Times is probably the very worst newspaper of any reasonably-sized city in the nation?

Well, the paper has reached a new low with this ridiculous article that Chelsea alerted me to today. This was considered breaking news on the main page of their website this morning:

Cat stuck in pipe amuses schoolchildren (11:13 a.m.)
A cat, “probably chasing a mouse,” became trapped inside a pipe this morning at Houston Elementary, school clerk Sylvia Trujillo said.
Children discovered the immobilized animal and notified school officials, who in turn called the city's office of Animal Regulation and Disease Control, Trujillo said. Animal control arrived at about 7:30 a.m. to pull the feline from where it was stuck inside a drainage pipe, officials said.
Trujillo said the cat hissed when it was freed from the pipe.
She said no children were traumatized by the incident.
“To them I think it was funny,” Trujillo said.
The cat is being held at animal control offices, located at 5001 Fred Wilson, officials said. It will remain there for three days or until its owner comes to retrieve it. If no owner arrives within three days, the cat will be adopted or put down, officials said.
The fate of the mouse was unknown.

How is this possibly considered a news story?!?! It's not even a good human interest story! Mainly I wonder who the heck decided "Hey, there's a cat stuck in a pipe out in the schoolyard. Now that's a story I need to report to the newspaper!" My favorite part is that no children were traumatized by the incident. Oh, THANK GOD. Because hissing cats in pipes are really, really scary and might in fact cause permanent psychological scarring for these poor children! Oh, and "the fate of the mouse was unknown". That last sentence makes me want to believe that the whole article is meant to be tongue-in-cheek and the reporter knew it was stupid and was trying to be funny on purpose, but sadly I'm pretty sure the article is meant to be dead serious.

It must be an incredibly slow news day in El Paso. But even that is no excuse. Oh well, at least it was good for a laugh.