There is an art to stacking firewood, a skill that I lack. Every time I try, the pile eventually tumbles over. Just like the cartoon character Charlie Brown and his football, success for me in stacking firewood is always yanked away before ever getting a chance to punt. Which is why, several months ago, I carefully added each piece of firewood to my stack as if I were an ancient pharaoh’s engineer setting stones just so atop the Great Pyramid. How perfectly vertical the stack rose — how each and every log tightly jig-sawed neatly into place! The task took me nearly all day to accomplish, but the resulting cord-pile of firewood was rock solid.
Until yesterday.
While sitting in my office I gazed out the window into the front yard, where my eyes came to rest on the neatly layered stack of firewood. At that very moment, the wood pile trembled, sagged slightly, then tumbled silently to the ground. A murder of crows scattered nervously into the treetops.
What are the odds of my having witnessed that event at that exact moment in time?
After a while, the crows returned to their scattering antics and a gust of wind began covering up the pile of firewood with a blanket of leaves
[…] widely known is a Pride of lions, a Murder of crows (as well as their cousins the rooks and ravens), an Exaltation of doves and, presumably because […]
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Oh, Tim, Have you kept track over the years of all the strange things that happen – only to you? It is your destiny!!
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Stack the wood between two rather close together trees or put 2 x 4’s in the ground at whatever distance you want your woodpile to span. You expect too much from your woodpile.
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This would only happen to you, Tim, LOL! And I agree with Michael S. from Santa Claus, IN.
And what would you prefer… a sneak attack (i.e., the pile sneakily falling while you were asleep) or an honest and flagrant display? :o)
Annie
P.S. Hey — I got a decent camera that can turn cartwheels & do handstands — have much to learn about its capabilities. Am having fun with it. And the birds and squirrels are not doing my bidding. Today I got only the rear end of a squirrel. Was not after squirrel butt. At least he had a nice tail…
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Annie, I think you should begin a “squirrel butt” photo project (SBPP). I’d rather see the butt-end of a squirrel (running away) than the head-end (heading toward me) any day. I have yet to see the butt-end of a squirrel carrying off the only ripe tomato from each of my tomato plants.
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“…murder of crows.”
Second time in as many days that I have run across that correct grouping of those crafty birds.
I expect to see it more frequently in the coming days – curious.
Also, I don’t think the Phoenicians had anything to do with building the Great Pyramid (of Pharaoh Khufu) in Egypt. Just being picky, I suppose.
Timothy from Canada
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Hmmm. You must mean “ancient pharaoh’s engineer” — right?
BTW, there was a rather bizarre made-for-Showtime movie out in 1998 entitled “A Murder of Crows”.
http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi3082027289/
It was a plot-twisting, whodunnit, serial-murder in New Orleans type of thing that entailed the publishing of a plagiarized novel. I recall that I almost liked it.
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Hey, Tim
I was the friend with you when that tree fell.
Rich
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Yes, you were. A very good friend. And a Lima bean lover.
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I had a similar incident happen one New Year’s Day. We had been treated to a wonderful ice storm on New Year’s Eve; the kind that brought down huge limbs, small trees and power lines all over the area.
I had a fairly good-size pine at the edge of my yard that leaned precariously over toward the lake at about a 15 degree angle. The wake from passing powerboats had undermined the tree’s roots, but the tree had been standing like this for several years.
I had opened the back door to put the dog out on his leash and was looking around observing the beautiful snow/ice coating on all the trees and docks around the lake. A sharp “crack!” caught my attention and I saw the pine tremble, then slowly lean toward the lake until it was laying on the ice, forming a furry, ice-covered bridge between my yard and the boat dock beside us. The whole process took about 30 seconds – long enough to appreciate the moment and to realize the odds of having been looking out the back door at that very instant were pretty phenomenal. The forces of the Universe coming together at just the right cusp?
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I had a very similar experience with a tree falling over while I was watching it. A friend of mine was there with me. I wrote about it years ago — how odd it had been. If I can find it I’ll post it here.
BTW, the picture at the top of my blog (at least for now) is the 2002 ice storm that happened here at Lake Gaston. A beautiful, freak event that caused power outages everywhere.
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You realize, of course, that this was Fate thumbing her nose at you. She wanted to make sure you didn’t miss it…
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I think the crows were up to something…
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The odds depend, of course, on how much of the day you spend gazing out of your window into the front yard 🙂
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Similar, I suppose, to how much wood a woodchuck can chuck?
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