"ALVARADO — For three days, 2 1/2 -year-old Kevin Brown’s chubby bare feet took him through acres of rugged North Texas pastures of grass taller than his head and around several ponds where bobcats and coyotes roam.
He probably slept and hid under thick bushes in some woods, frightened from a brief thunderstorm and the noise of rescue helicopters and searchers on foot, horseback and all-terrain vehicles.
When a helicopter pilot spotted Kevin on Sunday night, he was nearly a mile from his home. Kevin was lying on his stomach at the edge of a pond as if he had been drinking, and the co-pilot jumped out, scooped him up and flew him to a hospital.
“This little fellow was gone 69 hours and 16 minutes. There’s no way he should have been alive,” Johnson County Sheriff Bob Alford said. “I don’t know if you believe in God, but this is truly a miracle that this boy is alive.”
I *want *to be happy about this story; it’s a wonderful thing when a child is found long after hope has faded.
But…I also want to dopeslap his parents for letting their kids play alone outside at those ages. My children and 2 and 4, and there’s no way I could let them be outside alone playing.
Maybe I’m just a worrier and a spoilsport. Anyhow, great news that the little one is safe. I think I need to go kiss my own little ones.
OK, I’m not a parent so I have no clue, but given that the kid had water, why wouldn’t a well-fed US toddler survive 69 hours alone? Does Texas get that cold at this time of year? I’m sure that while there are bobcats & coyotes, they’re looking for a little easier to take down prey.
Before I start this, please understand that my post has nothing to do with the kid or his parents. Anytime a child is found alive in this kind of situation, you have to cheer, weep, whatever.
Having said that, I went to Google News and typed in [“Kevin Brown” missing]
This event started on Sept. 22nd. He was found on Sept. 24th.
The stories from the next five days relayed pretty strightforward fact about his finding.
Then, about Sept. 28th, the story gets picked up by AP writer Angela K. Brown. And it gets embellished way out of proportion. She should be writing for a tabloid.
Her embellishments, IMHO:
“Kevin Brown’s chubby bare feet”
“He probably slept and hid under thick bushes in some woods,”
“Kevin was lying on his stomach at the edge of a pond as if he had been drinking”
I’d be curious to know if she ever saw his feet.
She is fantacizing, if she thinks he had the cognative ability to sleep and hide under bushes.
The previous stories all say he was trying to drink from a “stock tank” not a pond. Where she got her info is a mystery.
I notice the news story never mentions the mother coyote who had a whole litter to pups to feed. That litter starved to death because the mother was unable to drag home a toddler to feed them.
Or in some parlance. (The exact terminology has been a source of dispute in my family for at least 3 generations, i.e., “the pond is frozen over,” “Hey, that’s not big enough to be a pond…that’s a tank.” “Well, anyway, it’s frozen over…”)
