Thursday, July 17, 2014

Party of Nuts

The yellow sign in the background near the lakeshore warns "DEAD END". Sturdy posts are mounted in the ground so that folks don't ignore the sign and try to drive into the lake anyhow.

But just in case they plow trough the safety posts and ignore the sign, they can reach out their car window and grab an orange drive-by life jacket on their way to or through the lake.

Safety first!



By the way, we're serious. Don't park here. Sign says so. There's a very good reason too.

A tree overloaded with squirrels might fall on you.

I had to call maintenance to come out to remove the tree top from the road. A rather large tree had toppled over with just the tipmost part landing in the road.

I was hoping they wouldn't ask. Please, please, please don't ask me.

But when two maintenance guys drove out to look at the task, they just had to ask me; "How could a healthy big tree just fall right over on a windless day with no recent rains? I mean if the ground was saturated, it might loosen up the roots. But this is strange. What on earth happened here?"

Yepper, they just HAD to ask me what happened.

The crew of two patiently stood there waiting for me to explain about the mishap. The older fellow was chewing on a toothpick, the younger guy was just grinning while sort of rocking back and forth in his work boots.

I took a deep breath then explained:

"I wish those wild teen squirrels would calm down. It's summer and rather than stash their nuts they are going nuts!

You are correct. No rain, no winds, yet a towering healthy tree decided to topple right over with about a 100 or more squirrels in it. I think it was their surreptitious party. Summer is here and we have lots of adolescent and teenage squirrels at play. Someone's parents went on vacation so the teen squirrels that promised to take good care of the "tree house" while their parents were away, instead had a party for their friends.

As word spread, the party became bigger and bigger and bigger as more teen squirrels raced over to frolic and run wild. Soon there were about 100 squirrels racing up the tree. And well... too many squirrels and the "tree house" collapsed under their weight bringing the whole tree down. The squirrels ran off in 42 directions, just leaving the lone teen squirrel all alone to face his parents.

His parents were SO mad when they came home too. Now they're out looking for a new tree to move into and junior is grounded from having anymore parties.

And THAT is how the tree fell."

The older fellow dropped his jaw and his toothpick fell out of his mouth, onto the ground. The younger one was wide eyed with his mouth opened in amazement. They both just stared at me when I finished. You would have thought I said something wild like an elephant just swam by.

Finally they looked at each other with surprised incredulity, then turned to look at the tree, then look back at me. The older one cleared his throat then said "Hmm, yeah, um, we figured it was something like that..."

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2 comments:

  1. You have outdone yourself. I love it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. MY first time at your blog and I'm loving it, the tree episode is hilarious. Keep up the outstanding blog.
    Take care,

    ReplyDelete


Life is goof!