Olympia, WA – The Sasquatch Sun has learned a popular fir tree on the campus of Evergreen State College has been hugged to death. “We are sickened by this horrendous news,” said George Bridges, President of the college. “We will get to the bottom of this crime.”
Bridges ordered an emergency lock-down of the school. This has effectively allowed nobody to leave or enter the campus. “We’re taking this seriously. More seriously than the actual murder of a person,” said Bridges. “We can’t allow anyone to leave until the perpetrator is caught. But we’re just stumped anyone could do this.”
Campus police discovered the grisly scene late Monday night after an anonymous call came in. “There were needles and branches everywhere. Bark was stripped off. Pitch was all over the place,” said Officer Paul Bankart. “I never want to see anything like that again. I can’t get the pitch off my hands. It’s the stuff of nightmares.”
The fir tree, known as Gentle Green, was over 100 years old. It was planted in 1917 by infamous logger Jebediah Treeknocker. He loved logging so much the following joke is on his tombstone:
A logger is about to chop down a tree and the tree yells, “Stop! You can’t chop me down, I’m a talking tree!” The logger responds: “Yeah, and you’ll dialogue.”
“Jebediah murdered hundreds of thousands of trees during his career. Obviously it was a joke to him. But he felt a little bit of remorse about his crimes against Earth. So he planted this single tree to pay for his sins,” said historian Liz Quill. “He died the next day when he choked on a fir needle. I believe he is in heaven now, even with that awful dad joke of his.”
Gentle Green was very popular with students at Evergreen. It was so popular people would line up for hours to hug and occasionally kiss the tree. However, the hugging caused bark to fall off where students wrapped their arms around the trunk. It got so bad in 1979 that the college banned hugging Gentle Green. They put a barrier around the tree to prevent further hugging and other things students were doing to the tree.
According to police records, however, somebody has been secretly hugging the tree at night. This over-hugging finally caused Gentle Green to die. “I love hugging trees like everyone else does. But over-hugging is wrong, especially when the tree doesn’t give you explicit permission to hug,” said Bridges.
Officer Bankart said the investigation will continue. “So far every single person that attends Evergreen State College is a suspect, particularly those enrolled in the Gender and Women’s Studies Department. This is going to take a long time, but justice for Gentle Green will be served.”
The campus will remain closed until further notice.
