Wait... What?

I'll admit, sometimes I am not the most observant person. Therefore it should not be a huge surprise that the following conversation had to occur yesterday around noon as my uncle was dropping stuff off at the house:

Uncle Mike: When did you guys lose that tree?
Me: What?
Uncle Mike: The tree down in the front yard.
Me: What?
Uncle Mike: You guys lost a tree in the front yard.
Me: You mean, like a big branch?
Uncle Mike: No, a tree. A big one.
Me: Wait, we lost a tree? (I am not my sharpest on Sunday mornings).

A quick walk down to the end of the driveway revealed that we had, in fact, lost one of the big trees that is at the end of the property down by the street. It was especially surprising because there was no snow or severe wind Saturday night. Even if the stump showed a lot of termite damage you would have expected something from nature to finally push it over. From the branches that were still in the street it had obviously fallen that way then been pulled off the road by a town worker who marked the location with a couple orange barrels (didn't see the barrels either - again, not our sharpest morning).

This, of course, led to a big discussion as to just when the hell this happened and why didn't any of us hear it, because by the size of the tree I would have expected a bit of noise. There were people over for a holiday party, they didn't leave until after 1 AM and no one said anything about a tree down. My brother got home around 2 AM and he didn't see it either, so it was after that, but before I got up around 11. So, I've narrowed it down to a 9 hour window... very helpful. We weren't sure whether it was our responsibility or the town's, but had every intention of calling this morning to see which of us was going to be cutting it up.

This is normally the part where I would be showing you a picture of the big tree, but someone from the town showed up with a chainsaw this morning and it was gone by 9 AM. I guess that answers the jurisdiction question. Now, since I gave the town some crap for the plow job near my house last week, I must commend them for the great job they did with tree removal. Other than some lines of sawdust on the sidewalk and a big stump at the start of the property you would have never guessed what happened. But, the moral of this story is that a tree doesn't need to be in the woods to fall and have no one hear it.