The dead pine tree fell ignominiously the other day, though I did not see it fall. Other dead trees I have seen and heard tumble down — no particular reason why at that given moment. Woodpeckers regularly visited this tree for years and it probably hosted many births and nurturings. The bark had been picked clean long ago by birds and weathering, leaving a pale skeleton, holes riddling the sides. When the tree fell into several pices, everything was soft and spongy punk, swarming with termites. Woodpeckers prefer their meals gotten the hard way, drilling and banging at a standing tree, and will ignore the dead tree now. The tree, teeming with life, enters a new stage, not much different than before it was born some sixty years ago.