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Spring has officially spring, and that means we've begun the countdown to our nations undisputed, favorite holiday. Arbor Day. Yes, Arbor Day, that wonderful day when we celebrate trees great and small. The day when we honor their accomplishments throughout history. The one day a year when trees reign supreme. And if we're not careful, it will be the day that America soon forgot.

For some, Arbor Day is a day of great celebration, with people all over America dressing in camouflage and wearing "Kiss me, I'm a tree!" buttons. For others, it's a day of somber reflection, as we think back and honor the trees that have left us in the past year. And for the rest, it's a day they don't even realize exists, despite the fact that it is clearly marked on their Dilbert desk calendars as the last Friday of...April? Is it April? I think it's April.

But that inobservance of Arbor Day, that unpatriotic- no, treasonous act of negligence will soon be history thanks to the benevolent work of the National Arbor Day Foundation.

Founded in 1912 by an intoxicated William Howard Taft, the National Arbor Day Foundation (NADF) has spent almost an entire century trying to encourage understanding of the truth behind our nation's unsung arboreal heroes. The pine. The oak. The maple. The birch. The cherry. The redwood. And that's about as many trees and I can think of right now.

But I digress; the NADF is doing a wonderful service for this country. Did you know that almost 90% of children under the age of 5 couldn't tell the difference between a Virginia Round-Leaf Birch and a Newfoundland Dwarf Birch? Or that less than 10% of adults have enough knowledge of the forestry arts to write a detailed 1500 word essay on the exact scientific processes that cause photosynthesis? If you go to other countries, like Japan, for example, and find a Senior Botanist, he'd easily be able to tell you all of that, and much, much more. If the Japanese can do it, why can't American children?

The purpose of the NADF is to move towards a correction of these issues. Through heavily funded national reeducation camps, and the occasional pithy comment at the expense of the Logger's Union Local 156, they have made great progress in their field, and have come up with a revolutionary new campaign to really hit home the effect of logging, and the importance of our leafy friends.

The campaign is simple, yet effective. What happens, is a team of NADF volunteers finds a logger's home, cuts down a tree in his or her front lawn, and pushes it so it falls directly on top of their house. They then leave a short yet neatly written note reading, "It's not nice having all the equity you've built up in your house destroyed by careless loggers isn't it? Think of how the animals feel."

This campaign was highly effective until one perceptive logger by the name of James...something or other, brought up the fact that the local woodland creatures rarely keep track of the value of the shelter's their built, and even more rarely do they borrow against that value.

Needless to say, the National Arbor Day Foundation plays an important part in our daily lives. From passing out annoying leaflets on the impending extinction of a tree they just discovered in my back yard, to destroying the houses of hard working loggers, the NADF is always there for us, fighting to the death a battle which no one really even realized is going on.

Learn more about this author, Andy Paulo.
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