WASHINGTON—Saying that in most places they are piled up 5 or 6 feet high, a report released Thursday by the Pew Research Center revealed that every one of the country’s ditches is currently overflowing with the children of worried parents. “Following an exhaustive survey of ditches and gutters across the U.S., we found that every single one is presently filled beyond capacity with young children whose mothers and fathers are, at this moment, wondering where their kids are and when they’ll be back home,” said lead researcher Alicia Smith, noting that of the millions of 4- to 10-year-olds nationwide who had been allowed to play unsupervised in the backyard for a few minutes, bike to a nearby convenience store, or walk to a friend’s house just across the street, virtually all of them are now wedged in between countless others in a muddy, filth-strewn drainage culvert. “Given the overwhelming quantity of kids lying facedown beside our nation’s roadways, it is essentially guaranteed that if your child has been out of your eyesight for even a minute, then he or she is already four or five bodies deep alongside a remote stretch of highway or unlit country road.” The report urged the nation to address the issue soon, as the sheer number of children in ditches meant they would likely begin spilling out into streets in the coming days.

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