Roadside humor: One of the jokes that...

Roadside humor: One of the jokes that parents crack to misbehaving kids in his West L.A. neighborhood, says Hans Laetz, is: “Go play on the freeway.”

Little did Laetz know that the day would come when Elise, 6, and Emily, 4, would take him up on it. He snapped a photo of them frolicking on a portion of the eastbound Santa Monica Freeway that was closed because of its recent deconstruction.

Laetz said, by the way, that he and his daughters came upon “lots of coins on the freeway that the sweepers apparently missed. We found about a dollar’s worth of nickels and dimes that we put in a Red Cross jar.”

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Fishy protest: Talk-show host Charlie Tuna, of almost-all-sports KMPC radio, has questioned our investigation casting a skeptical eye on suggestions that there’s a link between lost pets and earthquakes. We realize our reputation as an animal researcher has suffered a bit since we mistook a cockatoo for a cockapoo and reported it was a dog. The cockatoo, that is. Or maybe we said the cockapoo.

Anyway, Tuna dived into the quake controversy after we declared there was no evidence to back the theory of northern Californian geologist Jim Berkland that newspapers carry more lost-dog items than usual before a shaker. We pointed out there were an unsensational 45 dog and cat notices in the Jan. 17 L.A. Times.

Berkland and Tuna argued that the numbers must be tabulated for several days beforehand. . . .

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Challenge accepted: Here are the totals of lost and found dogs and cats for Jan. 11-17 of 1994 and 1993 (a quakeless period).

* Jan. 11: 42 (1994) 32 (1993)

* Jan. 12: 34 (1994) 39 (1993)

* Jan. 13: 43 (1994) 47 (1993)

* Jan. 14: 52 (1994) 50 (1993)

* Jan. 15: 56 (1994) 59 (1993)

* Jan. 16: 51 (1994) 68 (1993)

* Jan. 17: 45 (1994) 65 (1993)

We didn’t even include the 1993 disappearance of a turtle, Tuna.

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Hope he’s not as mad as the devil: We forgot to mention Wednesday that Eric Draper shot the Associated Press photo of the plaster angel watching over the hole in Balboa Boulevard.

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Food for thought: So who was observed eating San Andreas Soup at the earthquake-themed Epicentre Restaurant in downtown L.A.? Laura Chick, the city councilwoman representing much of the San Fernando Valley.

miscelLAny:

A black armband for City Hall? No, that isn’t a symbolic black shroud wrapped around the top floors. It’s some dark mesh netting installed to prevent terra cotta tiles from falling off the 65-year-old landmark. City Hall was scheduled to undergo seismic repairs even before the quake.