By: A Maple Tree
It is with great sadness that I, Yggdrasil King of the Maples, reach out to you. I recognize that this letter must come as a shock. Many of you leg walkers have been deceived into thinking that we trees are incapable of human speech. This is a ruse. We simply prefer not to be bothered. Also up until the advent of e-news, we couldn’t write editorials without using paper. This was a problem. Paper has always been awkward for us as it is, of course, the swollen and bleached caracasses of our fallen brothers.
Anyway I digress, the point of this letter is simple. I write to ask you, all of you, to please stop celebrating fall.
I recognize that for you humans, fall is great. There are interesting colours, the air is crisp, and you are provided with the comfort of a warm home (often composed of our corpses), maybe you even have a little fire going (also composed of our corpses). However, for us The Great Maple Trees, fall is not very fun. It is a horrific period of death and decay where our children — our once beautiful and joyful leaves — fall dead to the ground. Humankind, I say this to you sincerely: I’ve never smelled napalm or a raging forest fire, but in my nightmares they always smell like Pumpkin Spice.
With this in mind, when you venture out into the boreal forests that compose my kingdom please be respectful. You are stepping out into a hideous Maple Tree graveyard. Give this horrific hellscape the reverence it deserves. Also, while you’re at it, stop making a game out of raking. Do you have any idea how horrific it is to see a human rake together a pile of your decomposing offspring and then jump joyfully into the jumble of corpses and kick them all about? They may just be leaves to you, but to me that’s Jack, Simon, Marnie, Paul, Winston, Gottfried, Ida, Michael, Anthony, Charles, Peter, Franklin, Mordecai, Sally, Frederick, Marshall, Ali, Robert, Amanda, Esther, Mildred, Franny, Richard, Simon, Cornelius, Chester, Chet, Travis, Brennan, Brandon, Brennan, Graham, Frank, Malcolm, Liam, Jessica, Katie, Tianna, Lucas, Briane, Lewis, Donald, Robert, Billy, Brent Debbie, Daniel, Enoch, Albert and Matilda.
How’d you like it if I raked up a pile of your dead kids and then jumped all over them? Based on what I know of humans, you consider this to be a pet peeve.
In closing, please leave the Ugg boots at home, leave the leggings hanging wherever leggings are stored, and retire the flannel. Autumn is not a time for joy and happiness. It is a time of loss and despair.
PS – stop taking our syrup.
