Silent but Violent

True danger is found where you least expect it ...

This thought came to my mind recently, after noting the near-simultaneous release of two separate but related news items. One was the obituary for Peter Benchley, best known as the author of 'Jaws,' his tall tale about a vengeful shark that surely had a steroid issue. The other was a report released by the University of Florida, noting that the number of human deaths from shark attacks decreased in 2005 from previous years.

I dismissed Benchley's benchmark opus as a low-calorie version of 'Moby Dick' --- which I consider to be the Great American Novel --- but I was amused at some of the real-life stories it generated. My favorite was the girl who, after seeing the movie version of 'Jaws,' became afflicted with perpetual nightmares of shark attacks, even though she lived in Kansas City.

There were, no doubt, four people last year who --- given their fate --- would have otherwise preferred to live in her neighborhood. They comprised the total number of fatalities out of 58 shark attacks recorded in 2005. I'm assuming these were the four who were unable to deploy the three suggested means of defense against aggressive sharks: punch their snout, poke their eyes and/or rake their gills. They no doubt encountered sharks who weren't easily discouraged.

However, isn't it ironic that this fascinating fear of sharks which exists in modern culture is so out of proportion to the acutal human mortality caused by them? In the meantime, the real killer in Mother Nature's universe stalks much more subtly and reaps a grimmer harvest.

We're talking about trees.

Yes, trees are much more hazardous than sharks. As proof of this, allow me to present one of my all-time favorite feature articles:

Attack of the Killer Trees
By Gene Weingarten,
Washington Post Staff Writer,
Wednesday, January 7, 1998; Page C01
© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Co.

America was stunned this week by the tragic deaths of Michael Kennedy and Sonny Bono, who lost their lives to a silent killer.

Trees.

That the public was surprised is evidence only of our ignorance and gullibility. Americans are tree huggers. We love our trees. We loved asbestos, once.

Years ago, Ronald Reagan tried to warn us about trees, and he was ridiculed for his honesty.

Trees kill. Their bite is worse than their bark.

John Sevier of Atascadero, Calif., is an accident reconstruction expert. He investigates killer trees, or as he puts it, "deadly tree scenarios." It is his full-time business, and he makes a pretty penny at it.

"You think of the tree as your friend," he says, "not as something that will kill you or put you in a wheelchair for the rest of your life. But it can. And it does."

Ask the lumbering industry. A lumberjack is about as likely to get life insurance as a bomb squad demolition officer. The language of lumberjacks is peppered with peril.

A "butt jump" is the official term for what happens when the hinge of a partially severed tree snaps as the tree begins to fall. It is not uncommon. The trunk of the tree hops off the stump, like a pogo stick from Hell. It plops down on its severed end, which is angled back toward the man with the saw. The tree shudders, reverses its course. Have you ever tried to outrace an 80-foot screaming mahogany monolith with branches the wing span of a 747?

If you had, you wouldn't be reading this.

Do you know the official term, contained in Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations, to describe a dead limb lodged, insidious, in the high branches of a tree, waiting to fall?

A "widowmaker."

Here is another tree term: "looping root." Looping root describes a condition in which a tree root snakes its way up to the surface, then goes back down into the ground, leaving a loop on the ground the size of a human foot. "It's a trap," Sevier says. He investigated one case in which a woman was tripped by a looping root and suffered extensive hip damage.

Sevier tells of the case of the San Diego Zoo's Killer Eucalyptus, which collapsed and killed a girl. Eucalyptuses are particularly dangerous because they outgrow their own strength and suddenly crack and fall. "They prune themselves, which is great in the Australian outback, but not in the entrance to a zoo," Sevier says.

He has investigated trees that grew too quickly and blocked a stop sign. "By spring it is no problem," he said. "By midsummer, the stop sign is obscured and all of a sudden you have dead people all over the highway."

Item: June 5, 1997: A cottonwood in Albuquerque, N.M., dies when hit by a Ford pickup. Its passing is not mourned. In the previous 40 years, the Killer Tree of North Fourth Street, which presided over a hairpin turn, was responsible for the deaths of 23 people.

Item: Oct. 24, 1989: A federal study of hunting accidents in Georgia found that 36 percent of the hunters injured over the past decade were not shot by other hunters. They fell out of trees.

Item: Jan. 4, 1996: An Arlington man was seriously injured in McLean when a large oak tree fell on his car, rebounded and apparently struck the vehicle two more times.

Item: July 21, 1993, Punxsutawney, Pa.: Lying pinned under a tree, a woodsman with a broken leg cried for help for an hour before giving up hope. Then he saved himself the only way he could: by cutting off his leg with a pocket knife.

Trees' crimes against humanity are as old as humanity. Older, in fact. Three hundred seventy-five million years ago they caused the extinction of half the life on Earth.

According to scientists at the University of Cincinnati, as trees began spreading over dry, upland areas, their root systems broke up the rocks. This caused an overdose of nutrients to be washed into rivers and oceans, fertilizing the waters, leading to an explosive growth of algae. At least 70 percent of all marine animal species on Earth were suffocated and eradicated.

And now, 375 million years later, Michael Kennedy and Sonny Bono.

Coincidence?

This just in: On Tuesday, in the Solomon Islands, near New Zealand, a woman was killed while collecting fronds and branches to help secure her home against Cylcone Susan.

Cyclone Susan was blamed.

But the fact is, the woman was not killed because her house collapsed on her. She did not drown. She was not electrocuted by a downed power line.

She was beaned by a flying coconut. No one ever blames the tree.