"Here lies Sophie S., the victim of a maple tree."
When you pick up today's edition of Le Monde and see the headline "Murderous trees," you wonder whether the Lemon(de) hasn't been turned into the Onion. Then, as you turn to the indicated page, you start suspecting some cancerogenous properties of the otherwise innocent plants. Wrong again.
Over past thirty years, France has turned the trees lining their roads into a wooded death-row, and eliminated the plants guilty of deadly road accidents. Out of 3 milion trees censused at the beginning of the century, there are about 400,000 left today. Declared "public danger" they are blamed for car crashes that, still in the days of Albert Camus who ended his life in such a close encounter, would be counted among accidental fatalities or explained by the overdose of alcohol or by speeding.
And, from afar, no doubt, especially when the wind blows, the trees resemble rows of windmills...
What? Who gave wanna-be Don Quixotes driver licences?
