What The..?

Someone has stolen our tree.

As in, uprooted it. Gone. Utterly. Since this morning.

A whole entire tree.

I do not get this.

When I left for work this morning, there was a slender, dead, but decidedly extant tree in our front garden, which is essentially a metre-wide, less-than-half-a-metre-deep patch of dirt between the fence and the door. It was not a big tree. It was very much deceased, but in a scenic, unthreatening way. Except for our house or the fence, there is nothing it could possibly have fallen on, nor was it heavy enough (being both exanimate and hollow) to damage anything it did fall on. Even had this happened, the tree would – one assumes – still be there. Slanted, perhaps, and decidedly less well-earthed, but nonetheless present.

This is not the case.

Instead, our tree is gone. Given that we returned home circa 1:45 AM after an evening out, this resulted in rather less alarm than might reasonably have been raised at any other time. But, still. There is no sign of the tree near our house or in the street. There is – and I cannot stress this enough – an exceedingly obvious hole where the tree once nestled. And that’s it. Zip. Nada. Nothing. No tree.

I am so weirded out right now.

I mean, suburban tree thieves? Who steals a dead tree with grey, rough bark, two meters tall, that’s thin enough to put both your hands around and have the fingers touch? A dendrophiliac with an anorexia fetish? The landlord, for inscrutable reasons of his own? Did the tree fall down,  only to be removed by a kindly neighbour/Samaritan before we got home? If so, why not leave a note to explain the absence? Are aliens abducting trees? Why our tree? Are there other victims? These are the obvious responses, none of which is especially, well, obvious. Because, seriously: who steals a dead fucking tree?

I’m going to invesitage this.