Feed a tree today

So, leaf-peeping season has begun and in that spirit, I decided to look into the matter of why the leaves change colors. After consulting a leading expert (the first page that popped up in a Google search) I’ve made a horrific discovery. Apparently, trees get so depressed about the changing seasons that they stop sending green chlorophyll to their leaves, understanding that the leaves will rot and die but also knowing that they’ll need every food source available to survive the coming winter. In essence, trees are so distraught and desperate over the rigors of winter, they have to resort to eating themselves! Dear God, it’s auto-cannibalism going on in our forests and along our roads! Clearly we should stop celebrating the foliage and start providing something better for the trees to eat.

I’m soooooo impressed

After a recent shooting, police revealed that it was a sarcastic remark that prompted one man to shoot another in the knee. Sarcasm kills, my friends. Although a good lawyer may be able to convince a jury that his client was being more sardonic than sarcastic and they’d have to let him go. I mean, who gets to decide what’s sarcastic and what is not? That’s too much power in one person’s hands, surely.

Crawling with critters

Got another awesome sketch from indefatigable and possibly deranged artist Bill Eldridge. In this one he responds to my recent column about the signs of coming winter by drawing me in bib overalls and absolutely covering me with winter forecasting creatures. There’s an ant crawling across my head and its got an American flag sticking out of its “rear area,” for some reason. There’s a massive, red-eyed spider crouched on my shoulder, a woodpecker drilling into my temple, a mouse creeping up the back of my head, a cow wearing what looks to be a toupee, and a pig chewing on a stick. There’s also a duck marching on an angry snowman, an ear of hairy corn and a lighthouse off in the distance, swarmed by gulls. Oh, and a butterfly I spotted just now. That’s the thing about Eldridge’s work that I dig the most. You have to look at it all day long before you have a complete inventory. I’ve been staring at this one for three days now and I still don’t know why that ant has a flag where the sun don’t shine.

Thank you, Bill!

And the best thing about Eldridge’s work is that it takes so many words to describe that it fills half my column and frees me from the bondage of word counts. I am now free to go out and feed pizza to the trees.

Twisted

On Wednesday afternoon, a young man was reported to have stolen two racks of Twisted Tea from Shaw’s before fleeing on foot. The dude hoofed it across busy East Avenue, ran into the woods behind the Lewiston Mall, dashed across the tennis courts behind The Italian Bakery and scrambled up a hill to Blake Street where he trotted right into the waiting arms of the po po. By the time I left, police were still pulling bottles of delicious Twisted Tea out of the fellow’s sweatpants. Pretty sure he never even got to take a swig, but hey. A for effort.

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