It’s a bit after ten at night, on a rainy Thursday; I’m sitting at the kitchen table, working on some log analysis stuff for The Aural Times; our little corner of downtown is relatively quiet—

and suddenly I hear some clattering and look out the window to see what appears to be tree theft.

Some guy is cutting a couple of tall skinny tree-like plants from where they are growing in front of a nearby building. And then he starts dragging them across the street, looking a bit furtive. I pull out the binocs and zoom in, and perhaps he sees me watching because now he is running down the sidewalk. Toward me, as it happens: his goal is a door in the building right across the street from our kitchen.

He lets himself in, and hurries the trees in with him, and the door closes, and that’s that.

Why would you do something like that?