Stealing Fire(wood)

What are the chances?

We had an amazing ice storm here around Xmas time and there was incredible damage to all the trees in the city, including all around my neighbourhood. In fact, there were large (I mean, large) branches down on every block around our house, and many people had their power totally knocked out, some for over a week.

      this foto by Ron Bulovs, Wikimedia Commons                                                     

So of course as I walked the dog I gathered up particularly good pieces of wood (i.e. no larger than about 2-inches in diameter) from around the 'hood and brought them home and piled them up in the front yard, for eventual storage in the garage in the back – and eventual burning in the mud oven in the spring.

Free firewood! I had quite a nice pile of wood in the front, and then one morning I leave my house and... it's gone. This is all that's left:

Wood thieves? Who would steal wood from my front lawn? Who would need wood that badly? (Hmmm, anybody else have a mud oven on my street?) I had a hunch and then found this on the City website:

"The City will haul away all tree branches from front yards and roadsides and will include those that have fallen on private property if they are less than 15 cm (six inches) in diameter and have been taken to the curb. Please neatly stack limbs/branches with butt ends towards the road for City pick-up. Place wood debris at the front edge of your property as close to the sidewalk or road as possible without blocking either."

What are the chances? My wood pile was not very close to the front of the property, so some overzealous City workers thought they'd go the extra distance and oh-so nicely take it anyway.

Whatever the chances of this happening were, the universe aligned in a particular way and it happened. I consoled myself by reminding myself that I had a warm house to live in, and wouldn't die because someone had stolen my fire(wood). But it took a while to get over it. Honest.