LETTERS: QUESTIONS ABOUT BLOWING LEAVES

To the editor:

Thanks to the Southeast Missourian for recently publishing a colorful map outlining the geographical boundaries of the Cape Girardeau zones in which leaves will be picked up by city employees. In addition, thanks for listing the dates when leaves will be collected. However, after studying the map, I began to be bothered by what I hope will remain a hypothetical question. No, I am not concerned that the cutting down of Cape trees will continue at such a pace that, by the time it comes to collect leaves, Cape will have become leafless, having been rendered treeless. That won't happen. Rather, I am puzzled by an entirely different matter.

Say that on the leaf pickup day for Zone A it's windy and a single leaf or a whole bunch of leaves blow into the adjacent Zone B before they can be picked up in Zone A. If those responsible for picking up leaves observe this, will they make an unscheduled, possibly illegal, incursion into Zone B in order to pick up the leaf or leaves blown into Zone B from Zone A?

This scenario is more likely to occur along the borders of the zones, unless it's really, really windy. If that be the case, leaves lying in Zone A could fly into the far reaches of Zone F or, theoretically, outside all zones. Then what? And what about the potential impact of El Nino?

These questions have been on my minds day and night, so I hope you will answer them for me. If you do so, you will, my Southeast Missourian friends, alleviate a growing anxiety that the answers to these questions will forever be blowin' in the wind.

STEVE MOSLEY

Cape Girardeau

EDITOR'S NOTE: Steve Mosley's tongue-in-cheek questions deserve a similar reply. We suggest anyone who would raise such questions has entirely too much time on his hands and should consider volunteering to rake leaves for elderly residents. We further suggest the leaves be properly bagged to avoid any concern about blowing from one zone to another.