July 24, 2004 - The warning issued by the Secretary of Homeland Security that we face unknowable threats from Al Qaeda has had its desired affect on America’s transportation infrastructure. We have, in the interests of National Security become a nation afraid, ready to suspend the nation’s ordinary activities at the slightest hint of anything out of the ordinary. Transportation came to a halt yesterday between Chicago and its southwest suburbs when an unattended brown paper bag was discovered in the Aurora [Illinois] Transportation Center. Metro trains to and from the city were halted. Passengers were shooed out of the station and the first responders were called out. Official Aurora was braced for the terrorist onslaught.

Now brown paper bags in commuter rail stations are not all that rare, especially at a station in a working class suburb with an immigrant population in which many are still not sharing in the vaunted Bush recovery. It is hard to suggest that the usual contents represent weapons of mass destruction though the devastation wrought by the former contents of many of these discarded packages should not be discounted. But, somehow this brown paper bag lying in a corner with no one near it caught the attention of a Metro trainman who called in the threat.

The emergency services rolled. The bomb squad responded. In the city named for the dawn officials were determined that the first successful pre-election Al Qaeda attack was not going to happen in their city. In short order the abandoned brown paper bag was surrounded and, this time the terrorist was caught in the act and captured. His small stature surprised the brave firefighter who grabbed him.

It seems that the creature that had paralyzed Aurora was an alien immigrant from a distant, desert region of the world. You can expect that his foreign origin played a role in his presence at the station. Aliens like him are adept at hiding in unfamiliar and obscure placed. But from the tip of his nose to the tip of his hairy tail this alien measured just 5 or 6 inches. It was a hamster and he had been successful in his terrorist mission. Aurora had been terrified. Commerce had been delayed and ground to a halt. Thankfully there had been no detonation. Nobody was killed and nobody was injured. The tiny evildoer had not even bitten the hand that grabbed him.

I am tempted to say, as does Dave Barry, that I am not making this up and I am not. It all happened yesterday and you can read about it in today’s Chicago Tribune. What the article does not tell us is the cost of the response to the errant rodent. How much did the city and county spend of its Homeland Security nest egg? How much was the cost of idling one of Chicago’s commuter lines. What price vigilance?

If we are conducting our lives on this hairy an edge, then who is winning the war of terror?