Novel Christmas Tree Disposal

In the novel American Gods, by Neil Gaiman, a car is parked on a frozen lake for the purpose of placing bets on when it will fall through the ice. The ice on our ponds gets thick enough for hockey games around here, but I'm not so sure about whole cars. . .

However, some enterprising person thought to set up their Christmas tree on a pond sometime around the new year. It stood upright for a couple of weeks, and then wallowed on its side. This past week the tree has been a high point of our commute to work. "Has it fallen through yet?" "Nah, it won't go through today."

This was the tree as of yesterday.

It hadn't occurred to me before, but trees that fall into lakes are a normal part of the North American pond environment. In some areas, clean Christmas trees are deliberately sunk to provide fish habitat. I imagine young pines are a bit better for the environment than the rusty, oily, paint-chip-shedding ship carcasses that get sunk as "fish habitat" in the ocean.

Two days of fifty-degree weather finally did the job. Today there was only a tree-shaped hole in the thin scum of ice.