Tree falls, hand-wringing ensues

This is a story that could only take place in Communist California. I knew there was a problem the moment I laid eyes on the LA Times headline about a fallen sequoia. The opening graphs confirmed my suspicions:

Along the Sierra Nevada's famed Trail of 100 Giants, the mammoth sequoia had stood sentry since King Arthur's knights gathered at the Round Table.

It witnessed the arrival of the first European settlers and the flurry of miners in search of gold. The onset of the Medieval Warm Period and the passing of the Little Ice Age. It stood, unperturbed, through the Great War and the one that followed.

Oh, brother. The writer, Bettina Boxall, had her lips wrapped around a bong while typing out that strange drivel. You know, the high winds we had in Laguna Beach last January knocked down a pygmy palm in my back yard. Can I get an emotional Los Angeles Times story, too? I didn't even have a ceremony. I feel terrible now. Maybe it doesn't matter, because my little palm didn't stand "unperturbed, through the Great War and the one that followed."

Here's the transition from Act I to Act II:

Now, the U.S. Forest Service must decide what to do.

The writer's suggestions pretty much say it all:

Slice a big hole in the 300-foot-long roadblock? Go around it? Over it? Under it?

Wow, we'll have to close the Apple stores. You'd think the president got shot. Or the International Space Station fell out of orbit, burned through the atmosphere, and landed on the Queen of England, God bless her soul.

Ladies and gentlemen, listen closely. I will speak (write) very softly now... IT'S A FUCKING TREE! IT'S A FUCKING TREE! Take a chain saw to it and haul it away, for the love of God, man! WTF?

Okay, that would never satisfy the hippies of California. Though I can't comprehend the mindset of California Nutjobs (I don't even own a bong), I will try to offer solutions to the problem. Here's a list of options for the dearly departed tree:

1. Carve it into a giant statue of Karl Marx and put it in front of the Politburo in Sacramento.

2. Make a chair. Wood is a good material for making furniture. A sequoia would probably make a thousand sturdy chairs.

3. Set it on fire. Humans have been warming hands over wood fires for, oh I dunno, 80,000 years? I wonder if prehistoric cavemen would wring their hands when they found a fallen tree in the woods? Lacking an LA Times, did they stand around the deadfall and grunt while scratching their lice-filled heads? Were there legal implications to consider?

4. Carve it into the world's largest dugout canoe. Canada can use it for a battle ship.

5. Chain Daryl Hannah to it. She and her odd, tree-hugging friends are in mourning right now. Maybe the enviro-loonies should chop down 5,000 pines -- because the death of a pine doesn't evoke any melodrama, for some reason -- and make a gigantic coffin. Then the poor thing can lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda. President Obama can posthumously bestow a Medal of Honor on the tree before it's lowered into ground marked by a non-denominational grave marker.

6. Grind it into 50 tons of sawdust and ship it to the Horn of Africa. They're starving over there. Tell them it's American flour and they can make pancakes with it. That would go nicely with the insects.