The Great Nativity Scene Caper

        Every dispatcher who’s been under the headset for more than the little bit can tell you about those ‘Oh Shit’ moments where you are just sitting there like a lump in a chair one moment and staring at a bank of ringing phone lines the next.  It’s generally a sign that something very bad has just happened.  This wasn’t the case, however, on an afternoon shift before Christmas.
         I was already taking a call from someone when all the sudden the phone lines lit up, strangely enough, like a Christmas tree.  My co-workers began answering phones feverishly and the word that I heard them say the most was ‘horse’.  The call I was on wasn’t really that important so I quickly finished and answered the next ringing 9-1-1 line.  The words ‘Stone Church’ came up on the display, a local progressive church in the area.
         “9-1-1, where is your emergency?,” I answered.
         The caller, I can’t remember if they were the minister or not, began to tell me about how they were having a live Nativity scene at the church.  One of the donkeys that they had brought in for the evening decided that he had quite enough of that evening’s proceedings.  The next thing the caller knew, the donkey was walking down the middle of a well-traveled four-lane street, oblivious to traffic in the area.
         “What are we going to do?” the caller asked.
         “Well,” I answered in all seriousness, “the first thing that you need to do is get your ass back to the nativity scene.”