It's a bird, it's a plane, it's ... a student pilot and instructor from Pennsylvania who scared the hell out of the capital for a few minutes over the noon hour.

To most everyone in Washington, it all unfolded in a matter of a few minutes with some lingering confusion as to what exactly happened. To others, seeing the planes and helicopters (the photo of a U.S. Park Police helicopter above is from Blue Green's Flickr photostream) buzz overhead or having to run the hell out of or away from a government building in the evacuation zones -- the White House and Capitol campuses -- it may have resurrected memories of Sept. 11, 2001 (or the evacuation prior to last year's state funeral for former President Ronald Reagan). There were flares fired overhead and warnings of two minutes before impact flying about.

But then everything was fine. And people went on with the noon lunch hour, brushing it off as a part of the normalcy of living in D.C. Others were glued to their computer or televisions for hours trying to figure out what had happened. (For your lunchtime reading, once the all clear was sounded, DCist quickly put up our Eating In recipe for Cajun Pasta to sooth your frayed nerves. You can thank us later.)

With every news outlet now analyzing the defenses of our city and our emergency response to today's air scare, we must do our part to scan for interesting tidbits.

Just as a reminder of what we do have protecting the city, the Post has a great infographic of where the restricted air zones are and what military defenses are at the ready to thwart an attack on the capital.
Among the details:
-- 160-person Army National Guard air defense artillery unit armed with "supersonic" Stinger missiles on 24 hour watch
-- military jets on irregular combat patrols and Andrews Air Force Base-based F-15 and F-16 fighters fueled and at the ready for take-off

The image at left is of World War II-era propaganda, which you can purchase as a t-shirt from this distributor. It seems that from today's experience, our defenses did it "right" and in the future, any Cessna will be made to "bite" it. This, however, is a whole different story.

Our favorite quote we comes across is from the NY Times, quoting a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman commenting on the amateur pilots from the Keystone State that caused the scare:

It looks like these guys drew a line with a ruler in a Rand-McNally Atlas.

Which is perhaps, as the Post reports on Thursday's front page, why the return of general aviation to Reagan National Airport seems unlikely anytime in the near future. "Certainly a high-profile incident does not help the case," a senior administration official tells the Post.

According to Reuters, the president was biking out in Maryland. The park where the president was? The Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, where you can take the Patuxent frog call quiz!

What did you think of the air scare?