Can. Someone. Please. Make. That. Baby. Stop. Crying.

No. Babies are notorious for crying as long as they feel like it; psychologists say adults hate that sound more than virtually any other; and, well, there you are.

It's an age-old dilemma, and its familiarity may account for the way in which an incident on an Oregon bus last week has become an international cause célèbre. It's the story of two dozen passengers, more or less, a baby in a bad mood, and a bus that motored through its own terrible little Twilight Zone on the 16 miles from Beaverton to Forest Grove in the Portland suburbs.

The trip ended only when the bus came to a halt, the mother, Magdalena Rabadan, and baby were ordered off, passengers protested in her defense, the driver suggested they could leave, too, if they didn't like it, and everybody did.

Rabadan says she called her husband for a ride home.

Oregon has talked about little else for days. Hundreds of comments have come in from around the world to newspapers and TV websites, with people weighing in on behalf of beleaguered moms, stressed bus drivers, abused passengers, tired babies — the whole unhappy mix of humanity thrown together on buses so often that it's a wonder only the babies cry.

The controversy is certain to pick up steam after another report surfaced Thursday, of a male driver for the area mass-transit agency TriMet making another rider with a fussy toddler get off a bus in August. The Oregonian reported that an out-of-service bus was dispatched to pick up Amy Pittman and her 2-year-old son after the driver ejected them miles from their suburban home. TriMet says the driver was disciplined.

The child in last week's incident, the driver said, started howling in Beaverton.

A mother herself, that driver apparently halted the bus two stops short of her scheduled destination, and went back to talk to Rabadan, futilely cradling and cooing to the 2-year-old.

Rabadan spoke little English, and the driver said she didn't seem to understand a suggestion that she give the child some keys to play with. Rabadan told KATU-TV through an interpreter that she understood the driver wanted her to stop her daughter from crying, but there was nothing else she could do.

Other passengers became impatient, according to various blogs and news reports, and yelled at the driver to get moving, that the baby wasn't bothering them.

"More than a few delved into obscene name-calling toward the driver," one passenger reported on a local bus driver's blog, "Rantings of a Transit Bus Driver."

"The driver then compounded the whole thing by spitting heatedly that anyone who didn't like it could get off the bus as well."

Rabadan, apparently embarrassed at the fuss, left the bus. "The mother and crying baby were asked to leave the vehicle," said Mary Fetsch, a TriMet spokeswoman.

The passengers weren't about to let it go, though. Jennifer Chapman, a graduate student in early-childhood special education, challenged the driver.

"I said, 'You can't kick a woman and her baby off at night in the middle of Hillsboro,' " Chapman told KOIN-TV. "And she said, 'If you don't like it, get off the bus.' "

Chapman did and stood next to Rabadan, and the driver then said anyone else who didn't like it could also get off the bus.

One by one, she said, every other passenger on the nearly full bus filed off.

The dispatcher told the driver to go ahead and leave the rebellious passengers to wait for the next bus.

For future reference, though, throwing crying children off the bus wasn't allowed, according to the blog and confirmed by TriMet. "If somebody's kid is crying, you still have to drive the bus."

Fetsch said the driver, a 10-year veteran, had been put on paid leave pending an investigation.

In retrospect, maybe everybody was a little bit too mad about something that wasn't that big of a deal, said the passenger who wrote in to the bus blog.

"The driver lost her cool and escalated the situation, yes, but several of us riders (yes, myself included in the heat of the moment) did not make things any better."

Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.