Infanticide
Knowledge seems so much more readily absorbed when one is doing the absorbing from the top of a tree. Perhaps it's the quiescence of natural surroundings, or the absence of distractions (internet, bed, other people), or maybe it's the cunning way in which perching precariously at great heights is a very effective deterrent to falling asleep.
In a tree you feel perennially displaced. It's not your element. Squirrels taunt you from the higher branches, those of your own species furrow their collective brows at your swinging legs from below, and the gnats requisition air space with incorrigible insistence.
It's the derision from your own species that is most entertaining, though. Watch closely: the five gnat-like humans, inflated with snot and insufferable smugness, their voices widening into earshot.
"Why don't you try that bicycle?" The chainsaw grates out of her nasal accent. "It's just, like, lying there. Go on, I dare you!"
Touch it and I'll cut you, I didn't say.
"I don't wanna."
"Chicken shit!" What I said about old people saying young things applies here, but in shrill, petulant reverse.
"Chicken shit yourself!" The machismo prised his mouth open. "One, it's a girl's bike." He was all knees and elbows and badly-cultivated sneer. "Two, it's too big for me. And..."
They waddled into eye contact.
"...three, there's a girl in the tree."
Explosion of chattering, bracketed in the same quotation marks because not even Henry Higgins could have distinguished five different voices from the shrill cacophony that transpired. "What's she doing in the tree? Do you think she's crazy? Stop it, she might hear you. You stop it. Do you think she can hear us? She looks really weeeiiird. Stop it, she can hear you. I don't care. She's looking at you. I'm not scared. I dare you to talk to her. Ew no! She's a girl. I dare you to ask her if she's a monkey. Go on! You're nuts. You're chicken shit. Chicken shit yourself! Bawk bawk!"
My mind took over here, with gleeful impunity, envisioning them crushed into the spokes of my girly bike, or draped kicking and screaming over the highest branches of the tree, or ambushed by disgruntled sniper-squirrels, or disembowelled and feasted on by gnats. And that girl who spoke through her nose, lashed to the tree trunk with her own guts and forced to listen to her own voice for the rest of eternity, or until her eardrums detonated in self-defence.
Meanwhile, they walked away, which was probably the better solution for all of us.
On another note, it's been criminally glorious outside for two days now. Criminal, in the sense that it would be morally reprehensible to be indoors, e.g. posting to one's website. Thus, the post ends here.