This is News?

Heck, this happened to me back in 2000... thanks to my good friend, Chris Herndon, and his "evil minions."

Woman finds 37 Christmas trees near pool

ALLENTOWN, Pa. - When Carol Lopez let her Labrador retriever out for the morning the dog had an unusual number of tree trunks to attend to. Surrounding her aboveground backyard pool Lopez found 37 used Christmas trees.

"I had just woke up and boom, they're there and that's it," Lopez said Thursday.

Whoever put the trees there apparently took their time, neatly organizing and standing the trees upright.

Lopez said she called Allentown police, and an officer told her to call the city to have the trees removed. A city employee told her husband to drag the trees out of the backyard and they would be picked up free of charge, she said.

Lopez said she didn't know how someone climbed a tall wooden fence surrounding the yard, or got all the trees over it.

"People just don't have anything better to do," Lopez said. "That's someone who had time on their hands."

I think the count in front of my house was 39... and they not only laid them all over my front lawn, but also leaned them up against my garage.

How did I discover this? When, at about 3 am (after watching some late night TV) I opened the garage door to take out the trash... and all the trees fell into my garage. (Yes, I said a word that is NOT on the "Approved Word List For SBC Pastors"... and then I immediately took Chris's name in vain.)

I'm still not getting how this prank - which Chris & his gang of underage hooligans-in-training had been pulling LONG before I showed up - rates top exposure on Yahoo.

And this wasn't even as spectacular a prank as the time that they sweet-talked the church janitor into giving them a key to my office so they could move EVERYTHING in it into the foyer of the church. Yes, everything - desk, books, trash, whatever - and then set it up EXACTLY as it was in my office. Happy 30th birthday - right.