Don't tell Florida — or CNN, which might go all poop-cruise on this thing once the papal smoke clears — but D.C. has its very own man-eating sinkhole and, well, the people of D.C. are freaking out... even though it doesn't look at all threatening from the first pictures to emerge on Tuesday afternoon:

Adams Morgan now has a sinkhole. twitter.com/willsommer/sta…

— Will Sommer (@willsommer) March 12, 2013

When the D.C. alert system sent out a message describing a "large sinkhole" in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of the capital, it got a lot of people (on Twitter, who live in D.C., who waste a lot of time on Twitter) a little worried — and understandably so: It was just a couple of weeks ago that an even larger hole sucked-up and killed a Florida man, to endless fear tactics from the media. This photo via Washington City Paper's Will Sommer, however, makes this hole look rather unthreatening. But, then again, the alert claims it goes down 25 feet. It only took a 15 footer to gulp up a golfer, says the Daily Mail. Perhaps hubris will get the best of us and this unassuming block of caution tape will slurp down America's entire democratic process, the Capitol building, the White House, and all. 

Update 2:30 p.m.: District Department of Transportation construction inspector Vic Matthews clarified to Sommer this is only 3-4 feet deep, so we can all rest easy.

But for now, it looks like we can leave that to the movies:

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