Timberrrrrrrr!

After many, many years (centuries!) of debating that great philosophical, navel-gazing question designed specifically to aggravate oh-so-serious grad students and stoners alike, I now have the definitive answer to the age-old quandary, "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

The answer is a resounding, plodding, disappointing, and rather anti-climactic "no." (Even if the tree did fall on Schrodinger's cat's box). You're welcome!

Let me explain...

A couple of weeks ago, a lazy Sunday, I was lounging about on the sofa in the rec room watching some dumb, old horror movie (that's just a given), while my wife was watering the tomato plants in the back yard. Comfy suburbia.

Then my wife opens the back door and says, "Stuart, come here. Now."

Grumbling, figuring I'm in for a lecture about something I did (or didn't do), I mosey out back, gloves up and ready to parry. I say, "why can't you just tell me what's wrong and don't go through the...the...uh...HOLY CRAP!"

The neighbor's Maple tree had toppled over and obliterated our fence, a disheartening and rather scary sight of nature run amok. Crazy. It had been a beautiful day, no storms, not even windy. Just...boom.

But it really wasn't "boom." More like a geriatric, toothless cat's "phttt." Only our back deck had separated me from the destruction and I hadn't heard a thing. Even scarier, my wife had been standing thirty feet away, hose in hand, and watched entropy happen.

I asked, "Did it make a loud thud? I didn't hear a thing! Nothing! Did it scare you? Did you scream, I would've screamed, a manly scream, but I would've screamed! Did you want to run like in all the old disaster movies and try and outrace it only to find yourself doomed once you thought you'd cleared it? Did you get an adrenaline spike, first surprise, then shock, then fear, then relief you weren't flattened?"

You see, all of these thoughts did just surge through me and I attributed them to my wife as well. But, unflappable as ever, she said, "No, not really. I just watched it fall. It was kinda cool."

And, apparently, it didn't make a sound outside either. "Just a 'whoosh,'" she said. Although a "cool" whoosh.

Huh. There you go, philosophers. Doesn't matter if anyone's around or not, a falling tree doesn't make a damn sound. (Here, let me just kick that pesky Schrodinger's cat outta the way...)

Anyway, we alerted the neighbors. They, too, were in the house and hadn't heard anything. When they came out, they were quite shocked. 

I said, "Well, hey, at least it left a pretty clean broken stump."

"Oh, yeah," swiped the neighbor, "that's a really good thing."

"C'mon, silver lining and all," I mumbled as I Charlie Browned outta there, head hung low.

So, the neighbors were really cool about it and everything. They got right on it. The very next morning, a dozen mercenary, crazy-ass, chainsaw-wielding acrobats were on the case, juggling live chainsaws and taking risks that would've sent Evel Knievel into a thumb-sucking, fetal position. Cleared up in about two hours.

The problem was the fence. And it still sits busted up like a drunken giant had taken a face-plant and jacked up his dental work. 

No fault to the neighbors. Get this, local fence companies won't tackle a job if it costs less than $2,000. Which is ridiculous. There must be a lot of busted up fences in the Kansas City metro area collecting rust. 

Once they finally got some guy out to quote it, he said, "no." The reason being, the fence wasn't regulation size. The earlier installer, for whatever reason, had cut the height down all along the bottom. 

So there it sits.

Eat it, Nature. I'm keeping a running tally. It's Nature 3, Stuart a big fat whopping zero. I'm out! Of course if you factor in global warming, we're all about to be out. Game over.

Have a nice day!

Speaking of nice days, Zach Caulfield's having a bad day. A really, really bad day. In fact, you might call it a Bad Day in a Banana Hammock. Why is it so bad? Well, for starters, Zach wakes up in a strange bed, with no clothes and no memory and a nekkid, dead guy next to him. Of course, to prove that he's not gay (priorities; Zach's not too bright), Zach must find out what happened and that's where his easily irritable, highly competent, extremely pregnant, sleuthing sister comes in. Hey, this is just the first several pages! Find out how bad a day can get HERE.