The initial scanner call sounded grim. A woman was spotted sprawled in her parked car in an empty parking lot. She was unresponsive. Fearing the worst, expecting to begin an unattended death investigation, police officers rushed to the scene.

Indeed, the woman was not moving inside her car in the lot of the former Wal-Mart site. Police pounded on the window but nothing happened.

“She didn’t move,” said Lt. Paul Labarre.

Fortunately, the cops did not immediately write the woman off as dead. They continued to pound on the window, instead. Finally, a stirring from within.

The woman wasn’t deceased at all. She was only very, very tired while waiting for an acquaintance to finish shopping at a nearby store.

“She had dropped someone off and then parked in that lot to doze for a while,” Labarre said. “She was just really tired.”

They wished the woman a healthy snooze and went on their way.

“She told us she was fine,” Labarre said, “and that’s all we needed to know.”

— Mark LaFlamme

Wacky surrealism, movie-makers invade Bethel

Bethel was a happenin’ place this past week if you were a dog or child, or someone who delighted in crowds and chaotic surrealism.

Vehicles of all shapes and sizes bearing out-of-state license plates were parked up and down both sides of Main Street.

Trucks rumbled through town carrying loads of snow for movie sets.

Two big, white movie production trucks from the “12 Dogs of Christmas” movie-in-the-making were parked in front of the town office building Thursday, completely obscuring the Police Department.

A handwritten, fluorescent green sign labeled “12 Dogs” had a directional arrow pointing into the town office instead of the nearby Odeon Hall entrance where filming of the late 1920s movie was under way.

Town employees tried to work amidst all the noise, confusion and barking dogs outside and overhead on the second floor where the Odeon Hall theater is located.

They even helped redirect sign-misguided movie extras and onlookers who mistakenly entered the town office.

People with an inordinate number of dogs were everywhere, walking up and down sidewalks, mingling with other dog owners or trying to un-mingle leashed dogs.

And everywhere, in cars or walking on the streets, strangers – bristling with communications equipment – wore headsets, microphones, and earpieces like they were the latest fashion style.

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Acting, not all its cracked up to be

Last month, Karen Wolfson of Bryant Pond thought it would be great fun to have her 10-year-old daughter Lindsey Redgate audition for a bit part in the “12 Dogs of Christmas” movie being filmed this month in Bethel.

On Thursday, a very tired-looking Wolfson had second thoughts, saying, it wasn’t as glamorous as she’d thought.

Wednesday, she said, dragged on forever after she brought her child and Destiny Lyman, 11, the daughter of Curtis Lyman, to the movie’s Odeon Hall set in the Cole Block Building on Main Street as directed.

Redgate and Lyman, she said, are cast as background children, or the “BGs,” as they are called on the set.

But after a 14-hour wait, she was told to come back at 9 a.m. Thursday. By 2:45 p.m., the two little girls were still waiting to be filmed.

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