This story reminds me of an Easter egg hunt that became front page news when I lived in Anchorage.
Seems that there was more snow than usual that year along the hillside that surrounds Anchorage. The kids in their Sunday best were post-holing it in what for them was hip-deep snow, unable to move, much less find eggs.
To make matters worse, the snow had forced moose that normally grazed further away from town to come into neighborhoods to search for alder to eat. The best alder in town was in the field where the Easter egg hunt took place.
For the mathematicians reading along at home, here is your equation:
K + E + S + M = C (Kids, plus eggs, plus snow, plus moose, equals chaos).
Some kids got trampled by the moose. Some kids went missing in the snow for an hour and got hypothermia.
Which just goes to show, even the best plans by a parent are fraught with peril.
Such pain is what forms the basis for meaningful therapy later on in life, I like to think.
A postscript: The most satisfying part of the story was that the competing newspaper in town sponsored the event.
"I don't know how to feel about this," I told colleagues. "Normally when things go haywire at a public event, it's sponsored by us."