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Pinecone Pandemic

By David Smith


March 4, 2024

 

Greetings from the edge of chaos,

 

I have a number of reputations, some of which you are aware, others that are better left unexplored. I will also say that my reputations are sometimes contradictory, which may diffuse the whole notion of reputations altogether.  For example, I am known for being reliable and trustworthy by many people, and those same people know that I am often prone to prevarication. I am amazingly ambitious, and I have a penchant for procrastination.  And alliteration.

 

I’m stating this up front as sort of a diversion because if you knew what this piece was about you would already be clicking on some meme about Caitlin Clark.  Also, so that I can sneak in this statement: this week I intend to clean up the pinecones in my yard.  Maybe from where you are sitting picking up pinecones may not seem like much of a goal.  Unless you are sitting in my backyard, which would be a little weird.

 

It looks like all the pinecones in the state are migrating across my backyard. I don’t know if pinecones actually migrate, but they have to go somewhere in the winter, right?  Anyway, there are so many of them that’s what I thought of.  So now you know who you’re dealing with.

 

Then this week a friend of mine who lives in a completely different town and is not made up told me that he has a plethora of pinecones in his yard too.  Are you thinking what I’m thinking?  Well, no of course not, that would be a little weird. And I wouldn’t need to finish writing this.  Anyway, of course you are coming to the same conclusion;  Pinecone Pandemic.

 

 I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here, (which I hope you will agree is a decent pun) but at the rate these conifer emissaries are spreading they will cover the entire planet before the next solar eclipse. You can check my math: 52∞∑n=012n=pinecone−e(2)(5)iπ+∫522xdx.

 

Don’t panic, by which I mean run out and buy all the toilet paper and then leave your disposable face mask on the sidewalk.  I don’t think the pinecones mean us any harm, the pandemic is probably a harmless reaction to some stressor in the environment.  Or maybe something escaped from a Chinese lab, I don’t know. I’m not a politician.


I did some in-depth research while pouring another cup of coffee and learned that there are actually male and female pinecones. This made me laugh so hard I had to spit my coffee in the sink, which was totally worth it, even though it was really good coffee.  Worth it because it was that funny and also because when I spit coffee on the floor instead of in the sink it throws off my momentum. 

 

Somewhere there was a grant proposal written by some researchers who had a hypothesis that pinecones had genders.  And someone read that proposal and thought it was worth looking into and now here we are.  Some pinecones are male, some are female.  Maybe some identify as another gender, and maybe some like pinecones of the same sex, science hasn’t weighed in on that and I don’t have an opinion.  I’m not a politician.

 

I don’t know how the pinecones spread, it might be through contact, or maybe in the air, or maybe multilevel marketing, or maybe Amazon.  It is pretty impressive though. Pinecones don’t even have legs and the ones in my yard have somehow made it all the way across the lawn. Huh. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

 

I feel like I should do something to prevent the escalation of this outbreak.  But, as often is my wont, all of this thinking has led me to examine my ambitions.  Perhaps I shouldn’t interfere with nature, just let this solve itself.  Eventually, all of our yards will be covered with pinecones and it will be normal.  We will reach herd immunity to good landscaping.

 

Plus, if all the pinecones in the yard actually became pine trees, I am 100% confident it would solve the climate change problem.  I will also admit this confidence has 0% basis in scientific fact, which means that is probably already being adopted by politicians as new legislation.

 

So, it’s possible that the pinecones will still be here next Monday, unless they walk into Pam’s yard on their little pinecone legs, which is what I was thinking before when I wondered if you were thinking it.  I’ll also point out that technically I said I ‘intend’ to pick them up this week, and that will still be true. At least I think it’s true, I don’t know.  I’m not a politician.

 

If any of what I have written here has changed my reputation with you, I thank you, and I apologize, depending on what you thought previously.

 

 

Hope this finds you reading something else,

 

 

David

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright © 2024 David Smith

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