"On Tuesday, when Madison residents enjoyed temperatures that hit 78 degrees, a number of calls filtered into the state capital's 911 system with reports of dead people in the grass."

"Also known as, you know, sunbathers. It got so bad that the authorities had to take to Wisconsin Capital Newspapers's Madison.com to get the word out: 'Please tell cellphone users that people lying in the grass are not necessarily dead,' a dispatcher at the 911 center told Madison.com.'... Basically — and now tragically, if rather strangely — Madison residents were so unaccustomed to the good weather, and especially sunbathers, that they were very quick to assume the worst. They saw something, but maybe they said a little too much."

Says Alexander Abad-Santos at The Atlantic Wire, via Steve Elbow at the Cap Times, via Rob Thomas at the Cap Times.

Thomas's piece is extra amusing because it begins with something about — of all people — Meade.

Alexander Abad-Santos's was a little less amusing than it would be if it hadn't happened that, a year ago, a sunbather, lying on the grass in a Madison park, was run over by a city truck and killed.

ADDED: We were out on Picnic Point yesterday evening and saw this:



It turned out to be part of a medical school exercise. Groups of students would arrive and, led by an instructor, attempt to diagnose the medical problem, which was — I happen to know — a collapsed lung.