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.