beware the slumpy

Last night, there was this weird loud sound, that seemed like it was right outside my window. I almost sounded as if there was a woodchuck or some other animal beneath my window and it was startled and ran off.

Later, Luc was leaving, and he called me on his cell to say “You should come out here.”

A tree had fallen right across the street. I had noticed that tree, growing on the empty lot next door, and it was really leaning over a lot, but it still looked pretty stable. I did mention to a couple of folks that they shouldn’t park under it, just in case, but I didn’t think that it’d come down so soon. It had, and it was totally blocking the street.

I called the non-emergency number for the police, and they had public works come out and saw it up in the middle of the night. This morning, there’s just a lot of chopped wood sitting at the side of the road waiting to be hauled away.

So, the sound might have been the tree falling, or it could have been a woodchuck, or perhaps it was something else. No clue, and probably doesn’t matter. I just thought that it’d be good to bring it back to that, narratively. You know, it’d go something like this if this was a story on NPR or This American Life.:

“The tree is gone.  No more will it threaten cars that park in its vicinity. No more will it provide shade for the noble woodchuck, darting its rotund posterior across the street. No more will it be full of mournful mourning doves mourning out their mournful cries each morning. And as for those mourning doves, where will they live? If a tree falls on an empty lot and somebody hears, is anyone around? This is Silvia Poggioli, NPR News.”

See you tomorrow, dears.

– Drosh