If it had been a cow, we would have been all over it. But a six-year -old boy in a helium balloon?
Please.
We were too busy reporting on markets for hulless oats, proper treatment of bovine uterine prolapses and interprovincial amendments to agricultural trade.
Such subjects don’t have the breathless quality of television news “live from the skies above Fort Collins, Colorado,” but it’s our bread and butter.
And yours too, come to think of it.
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Sure, it might have been fun to be one of those television journalists who reported the purported flight of Falcon Heene of Colorado on Oct. 15.
It was non-stop coverage for hours as media followed the balloon and gave up-to-the-minute predictions on what would happen if and when it landed. It all turned out to be a hoax, with no boy in a balloon, but those folks thoroughly covered the story, which is still developing.
Around here, we have to concentrate on a different type of news, and it tends to move more slowly. We can only dream of such exhilarating hijinks … hmm, dream…zzz.
Zzzz … A call comes into The Western Producer newsroom: “A cow has been swept up in a helium balloon! It’s floating above Pennant, Sask.!”
We quickly dispatch a reporter to the site. He is told to text updates via Blackberry. (But not while driving, of course!)
The WP photographer hires a pilot to fly him around the balloon, where he hopes to get shots of it and the intrepid cow.
The news editor collects material on similar incidents and assigns another reporter to find the owner of the cow and balloon.
The livestock expert investigates the breed and age of the cow, number of calves birthed, feed conversion ability, data on its expected progeny differences (this is an ag newspaper, after all) and, oh yes, potential danger presented to other cows and residents in the Pennant, Sask., area.
The graphics editor sketches the anatomy of a helium balloon and a cut-way illustration of how a cow might look upon impact with the ground from 8,000 feet.
The editor, ever the voice of reason (this is a dream, remember) calls helium balloon experts for background.
She is told, by no less an expert than Jason Toews at Plantraco Microflight in Saskatoon, (and this part is actually true) that it would take 24,000 cubic feet of helium to lift a 1,500 pound cow, which would be nearly impossible.
Not only that, but at $40 per 90 cubic feet, it would cost $10,666.67 to get a cow off the ground, and who could afford that?
Stop the presses! yells the editor, and wakes herself up from a dream.
She wonders how a helium balloon got into her office. Then she goes back to work.
