When a tree falls on empty clothes lines, does it make a sound?

The answer to this non-philosophical question is yes. Last night about 9:30 I was minding my own business, already in my jammies, when I heard an all too familiar sound; that classic falling tree noise. I tensed every muscle waiting for it to hit the building. It didn’t. But as soon as the noise stopped, I put on a wrap and some shoes and grabbed my keys to dash out and see what had happened.

A tree fell from just outside out compound wall over on the clothes lines. We have 18 units in our compound, half are 3-bedroom and half are 4-bedroom. This is the laundry hanging area for the entire place. (I’m sure no one has a dryer!) And oddly enough, this was an evening when no one had forgot and left laundry out.

What makes this all particularly odd is that about 2 months ago a tree fell over that same wall, into our parking lot and damaged three cars, the wall and electric fence. This is only about 10 yards from where the tree last night fell. This is so random, since it wasn’t storming or anything either time.

Since shortly after our first tree fell and the folks across the street cut all their aging trees down, our compound is getting more and more sunny. It’s all fairly minimal on the big scale of recent worldwide earthquakes. But between these two trees and our personal flood, I feel I have had more than my fair share of natural disasters lately.