Photo by sally henny penny.

To say that the President-less, sports section-less, layoff-happy Washington Times is in trouble would be akin to saying that Wile E. Coyote is just an underachiever — that is, an understatement of Biblical proportions.

Ian Shapira reports in the Post today that the Times is openly being shopped by its owners, the Unification Church, after the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s family — who now controls a vested interest in the organization’s holdings — decided to slice most of the $35 million Church subsidy that is keeping the daily on life support. But by any account, the paper should be one difficult sell: Shapira’s account paints an image of a debt-ridden, “rudderless ship” of an organization, bleeding subscribers and a headquarters where “mice and snakes sneaking into the building.”

I know what you’re thinking — everyone’s had that coworker who flips out after they see a cockroach or two in the bathroom. (Part and parcel of livin’ and workin’ in the city, I say.) But Times employees aren’t joking around, people. Reporter John Haydon presents the photographic evidence of a three-foot long black snake, curled up in the corner of a room at the Times’ 3600 New York Avenue NE headquarters. Said Haydon: “This black rat snake sat a yard away from me through Tuesday’s news meeting at the Wash. Times. Only noticed it went I got up to leave. Must have crawled in through the vents. Got plenty of mice in the Newsroom for him to eat no doubt.” Delightful!

Put it this way: even if someone was interested in picking up a daily newspaper that, for all we can tell, hardly anyone in this area actually reads — let alone pays for — you’d think they’d want to grab one where the newsroom isn’t currently experiencing a mild reenactment of Chapters 7 through 12 of Exodus.

On the plus side, at least the Unificationists are attempting to sell before the locusts descend.