LITTLE PRANKSTER

We made a donation to the Arbor Day Foundation and to show their appreciate they sent us ten baby trees to plant. These trees are so young that they have to be babied along for a year or two before one can possibly transplant them to a permanent location. This time I looked at them – five dogwoods and five American redbuds – and said I didn’t want to bother. In the first place, it’s a long shot that these young trees will survive, and in the second place, we have no place for them.

But Mike couldn’t stand to just toss them. He planted three in the bed at the back of the house and talked Ken into taking the rest.

“Hmmm,” I said to myself a couple of days later. “ I thought he said he planted three trees. I only see two. I must have misunderstood.” And then I forgot all about it.

A couple of days later, Mike also noticed that there were just two trees. “I planted three,” he said. “I know I planted three. At least, I thought I planted three.”

And then we thought no more about it and he rode off on his bike and I set to work in the yard. And as I moved about, I noticed there was only one tree. Clearly, we had just discussed the two trees, which we were fairly certain had been three trees, and now there was only one tree.

Initially, I had been inclined to blame the deer, but now I knew the culprit. BESS!!! What a little prankster she is. And when I checked the twigs littering out drive, I found one of the baby trees.

The one remaining tree is now protected with a cone. KW