The Myth of Wile E

An Unnatural Disaster

Once all the trees were down, the fallen were further desecrated by chainsaws—torn limb from trunk.

Finally there was just my house standing in the middle of a sea of logs and branches. It was an unnatural disaster.

And that's when the mechanical dinosaurs finally woke up.

Three yellow robot dinosaurs, each with a giant arm, began scooping up the logs with their big metal claws, and dumping them onto trucks.

All day long a relay of these trucks would come and go from the valley, taking the trees away on a journey to discover their new fate. Would they become kitchen tables and porch swings, sharing in day-to-day family goings-on for decades to come? Would they become houses—or, ironically enough, treehouses? Would they become sailing ships, able to see the world? Would they become junk mail?

"Good luck," I called to the apple tree trunk as it waited to be carried away. "May you become a thousand poems."