If you’re an angeleno, odds are at some point during your time here you’ve experienced the falling of a palm frond from its tree.

I’d hazard you haven’t ever had the pleasure of being 40 feet away from 17 30 — count ‘em: 17 30! — of them full-sized suckers falling at once. I have. It happened this afternoon during my second mandatory Structural Integrity Test of the hammock:

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In the midst of the rigorous examination, from out of nowhere comes this woooooshing sound and I crane my neck far left just in time to see what looks to be the entire top of our 60-foot palmtree crashing down on the poor loquat tree next to it. Fortunately it wasn’t the entire palm tree top, just a helluva load of dead fronds. And I mean helluva (click to triplify):

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If that image doesn’t adequately indicate the mass of frondage that broke free and fell, here’s one of the stack following my clean-up efforts (click to triplify):

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In the wake of it really not being that windy I’m not at all sure what triggered the fall, much less the series of detachment events and/or physics that allowed 17 30 individual fronds to basically abandon their vantage point all at once. All I know is I hope I’m not 40 feet away the next time it happens.