Your dog or cat is missing. You search the neighborhood in vain for a creature you consider part of the family.

In your eagerness to be reunited with your buddy, you post dozens -- perhaps hundreds -- of fliers around your corner of Pittsburgh with your pet's adorable mug on it.

Your fliers promise a reward. But instead of a tip about your pet's whereabouts, you get a call from a bureaucrat at the Department of Public Works.

After initially commiserating with you, the employee tells you that your fliers violate an obscure city code. He gives you two days to pull them down or face a $300 fine for each flier the city can identify as yours on a utility pole or public surface.

Impossible! Couldn't happen here, you say. This is America.

You'd be wrong. It happened to graduate student Nicole Currivan when she put up 1,000 fliers of her lost dog all over the East End. As much as Ms. Currivan loves Mochi, her black-and-tan Shiba Inu, she and her friends scrambled to tear down the fliers before the deadline triggered a fine that would have left her financially crippled.

But a funny thing happened this week. Sanity was restored when Public Works Director Guy Costa decreed that fliers about missing pets don't violate city codes. Ms. Currivan doesn't have to worry about being fined if she puts them up again.

Still, it was enough of a scare to prompt animal lovers to contact Pittsburgh City Council to urge passage of a law that clearly allows fliers to be posted without threat of fines.

Mr. Costa's interpretation of the rule is, of course, correct. Still, it wouldn't hurt to have a pet exemption spelled out in law just in case the next public works director isn't as sensible.