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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 10/14/2007 : 07:11:27
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I mean, c'mon now; there's got to be a limit on just how silly you can get and still have any sort of credibility at all, and I think we've just about hit it. Faithful flock to Texas 'weeping tree'
'Ice' appears soon after owner dies; experts think it's insect nest
12:00 AM CDT on Wednesday, September 19, 2007
By MACARENA HERNANDEZ / The Dallas Morning News
mhernandez@dallasnews.com
RIO GRANDE CITY, Texas – An acacia tree that started sprouting a foamlike substance on its branches after its owner died is drawing hundreds of people a day to see what some believe is supernatural ice.
Photos by DELCIA LOPEZ/Special Contributor
People begin arriving at 7 a.m. to see the 'ice' in an acacia tree near Leonisia Garcia's home. They congregate under the tree, collecting water that drops from the leaves and praying. To the naked eye, the white stuff 15 to 20 feet up in the tree looks like ice braving the South Texas heat.
Not likely, say insect and tree experts who viewed photographs of the substance. They said the "miracle ice" is probably nothing more than a spittlebug nest.
"This is an ultimate bubble-burster," said Mike Quinn, an insect biologist for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. "But I think it's insect froth. It's minimally digested plant juices."
"It looks like spit, basically," agreed Paul Johnson of the Texas Forest Service.
The faithful and the curious have been coming to Leonisia Garcia's home near the Mexico border since last week, after Mrs. Garcia died of a heart attack.
Family members said they noticed the yellow-tinted froth and the puddles of liquid around the trunk a day after they buried the 92-year-old matriarch. They say she loved the acacia tree and spent days beneath it while coloring the cascarones – confetti-filled eggshells – she sold each year.
The tree has been "weeping" ever since, they say.
"We feel like that tree is now missing her," her daughter, Mary Lou Sanders, said. "Where it's coming from, I do not know. It is something I cannot explain."
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Now spit bugs are pretty amazing in their own right. We have a pretty good population of them around here. But I've never seen one that would grieve for the departed, dearly beloved or not. I have cursed them for garden depredations upon occasion, though.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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I spit upon the ice in the acacia tree!!
