MISQUAH — A blinking solar light at the end of a Whitefish Lake dock prompted a flurry of evening telephone calls to the Sheriff’s substation this week, several callers reporting what they were certain was a distress signal on the water, before Deputy Vang determined the source to be, in his official phrasing, “solar, blinking, and emotionally misleading.”

The light, a newly installed dollar-store model intended to mark the end of the dock for returning boaters, blinked in a pattern that at least three residents independently interpreted as a call for help. “It’s not their fault,” Vang said. “It’s dark, it’s out on the water, it’s flashing, and your mind goes where it goes. By the third call I knew what it was, but I drove out anyway, because the one time you assume it’s a dock light is the one time it isn’t.”

It was, on this occasion, a dock light. Its owner, reached at home and surprised to learn his fifteen-dollar purchase had mobilized the county, agreed to either adjust the light or “put a piece of tape over half of it,” and expressed mild satisfaction that it had proven, if nothing else, highly visible. “That was the idea,” he said. “Maybe it worked too well.”

Vang used the occasion to repeat the substation’s gentle standing guidance that genuine distress on the water is signaled by other means, and that residents who are unsure should call regardless, because “the deputy would much rather drive out for a dock light than not drive out for the other thing.” The light, as of Thursday, was reported to be blinking still, though now, its owner said, “less dramatically.”