The Legend of the Leaf, the Pecan and the Ditch

Once upon a time there was a brown leaf lying on the ground, in a ditch with multitudes of other brown leaves. Having nothing better to do, it looked around one afternoon and started counting the other leaves. After reaching 1,879 with many, many more to go, the leaf got tired of counting.

“I’m tired of counting,” the leaf said to itself redundantly, “I think I’ll stop now and do something else.”

Just then, a large, four legged animal came snuffling through the leaves, and when it got to the counting leaf, it stopped. It sniffed more closely, and then upended the counting leaf abruptly, grabbing a pecan from underneath it, and taking it to the edge of the ditch to eat.

“Help! Help,” said the pecan, “I don’t want to be eaten!”

But the leaf just sat back and said: “You’re a nut. It’s your nature to be eaten. Don‘t be such a crybaby”

But the pecan insisted to the end that it was meant to grow into another tree, not become a meal for a four-legged snuffling animal.

“Don’t you have any compassion? You were up there on the tree with me! You watched me grow from a tiny bud!”
“Yes,” said the leaf, “and you watched me turn bright colors when the weather got cold, and then get brown and dry and drop off the branch and float away. Did you reach out and grab me so I wouldn’t hit the ground? No!”

“But I don’t have any arms,” said the nut.

“Well,” said the leaf, “I don’t either.”

“That’s no excuse,” said the nut. But before it could explain why or how the leaf could help, there was a loud CRUNCH and the pecan fulfilled its role as part of the food chain.

“Glad that’s over with,” said the leaf. “What a whiner! Besides, it’s a lot more comfortable lying here on the dirt, without that hard pecan shell underneath me.” And just at that moment, a two-legged companion to the four-legged snuffling animal came along, and the leaf was scrunched into a thousand tiny brown pieces in the dirt.

“Mph, Mphhh, Phmmmp pmmmphph,” said the leaf, for its mouth (or what it thought of as a mouth anyway) had been totally mashed by the big two-legged creature.

Eventually, the brown pieces of leaf decomposed, and became part of the soil. Meanwhile, the four-legged animal and its two-legged companion returned throughout the fall to the ditch and the grass surrounding it. Eventually, the pecan was re-deposited in an altered form into the ground.

Years passed. And one spring morning, the leaf sprang out of a much longer and higher branch, and as it happened, the pecan poked out a little later that season quite close to the leaf. One day they struck up a conversation.

“You know,” said the leaf, “I’ve had a little time to think about it, and maybe I was a little hasty in just letting you get eaten back then. I guess our new position higher up on the tree has given me new perspective.”

“Well, you know, I think we’ve both become a bit more mature since those days,” said the pecan. “Let’s just try to watch out for each other a little better.”

That Fall, when the cold nights and windy days came along, they did take care of each other. The pecan edged a little closer to the leaf at night, trying to protect it from the cold breeze. And when the pecan started to wobble a bit on its stem, the leaf moved underneath, to catch it in case it fell. The leaf turned bright orange, then faded gradually to brown. The pecan’s covering got stiff, and opened up, exposing the nut to the cold air. When the nut fell out of the pod, it landed on the leaf, and took it down with it; and there they were, together again in the ditch.

Off in the distance, they could both see a four-legged animal snuffling its way toward them.
“Well,” said the pecan, “at least this time you cushioned my fall, so I don’t have any cracks in my shell.”
“Mphhh, Bluphph,Umphhupt,” said the leaf. For the pecan had mashed what the leaf thought of as a mouth when they hit the ground.



Editor’s note:
This is what happens when you sit a person down to a computer and say: “Write something. Anything.”

Blog at ya later,
-Geezerguy