Snuggsian Safety

February 18, 2004

When I was a kid, I loved to climb trees. My favorite was the giant macrocarpa that towered over our home. From its highest branches, I felt like the king of the neighborhood. I guess I would have hurt myself had I fallen. Thankfully, my parents didn't cower in the face of this risk. They let that tree be a part of my boyhood.

For 140 years, kids growing up in the English village of Fair Oak have had their childhoods enriched by a churchyard yew tree. But no longer. The vicar, the Rev David Snuggs, has just had it felled.

The yew tree, you see, was a WMD. It might let kids fall from its branches. It might poison them with the pips in its berries. Its wide trunk might let paedophiles lurk unseen. None of these things had ever happened ("We've never had paedophiles around here, and certainly none hiding behind that tree," said the woman in the village shop). Rev Snuggs, however, wanted to pre-empt such carnage, so he hired a man with a chainsaw.

Residents of Fair Oaks were outraged. The vicar remained unrepentant. "The distress and hassle I'm experiencing now is preferable to taking a child's funeral," he said. "People are more important than trees."