Considering the Trees

If you time it right, if you get that old Christmas tree to the curb on time, the city will pick it up. Haul it away in the back of a salt truck and turn it into compost. Most of the trees get picked up this way, but a man has been spotted ’round here, stepping from his Cadillac, considering the trees curbside, occasionally selecting one and wrestling it into his trunk. But that doesn’t happen too often.

What can happen is that people are late. They miss the cutoff, don’t get their tree to the curb early enough. And so there it sits, poor miserable tree, once cherished, now a thing to be disposed of, accumulating a layer of salt and snow, putting up with the indignity of prodding dog noses, under constant threat of being mistaken for a fire hydrant.

Here and there, these leftover trees are scattered, the trees not picked up by the city or by the man in the Cadillac.


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