"Serves you right, you selfish old tree!" hollered a white pine standing close by.
            The oak looked down upon the tiny tree and said, "What do you mean by that friend pine?"
            The pine thought for a moment, not sure why he had said it.  Then he remembered that he didn't like the old oak.  Never had.  "You think you're so special just because most birds come to you instead of to the rest of us!" With contempt in his voice he added, "And I'm no friend of yours!"
            Distressed by the white pine's unkind remark, she exclaimed, "I don't think that at all!"
            "Who do you think you are anyway?" continued the peevish pine.  "Always inviting those noisy birds to perch on your limbs!"  Its pine needles shook in protest.    "Don't you know their constant clatter deeply disturbs us?!"
            The oak said, "Why no, I thought my friends liked the bird's sweet songs--"
            "How would you know what we like?" interrupted the pine, "You never bothered to ask!"

            "Yeah!" agreed a willowy birch.  "You never bothered to ask!"

            "Oh goodness me," cried the oak in a fit of despair.  "I thought my neighbors enjoyed all the delightful songs just as much as I do."
            "Well we don't!" called a voice from behind her.  "All that noise upsets me!  Even stunted my growth!  Just look at me!" chided the tree.  "I should be at least as tall as you! Taller!  But noooooo!  I've become a dwarf pine, so low to the ground that all I can see are tree trunks instead of tree tops!"
            "You think you have it bad," said the white pine, "I'm even closer to that old tree than you are!  Look!  I'm so close that my needles brush her branches!"
            The oak tree didn't know what to say, so she said nothing in her defense.  For the first time in her very long life her sturdy branches began to droop -- and stayed that way.
            For weeks no birds came to perch on her branches for fear of sliding off!  In fact, it became so quiet in the sanctuary that a single pine needle could be heard landing on the loam....
            Her sagging limbs made the old tree tired and unhappy.  Drooping was so unnatural for an oak!  The other trees didn't care that she was miserable.  The white pine had convinced them that birds and squirrels and chipmunks were nothing more than a nuisance.  What they needted was calm and quiet!


ON A COLD, BLUSTRY December day, a woodsman came into the forest carrying a power saw.  With him came a frisky black dog that scurried about leaving his scent on the trunk of every tree.  Suddenly the woodsman stopped, smiled broadly and said to the dog,  "Rosalie and the kids will like this one!"  He circled the tree.  "It's not too big, and it's not too small.  It will fit nicely in front of the window!" 
            Knowing what the woodsman intended to do, the pine cried out,  "Nooooo!"
            The man gripped the cord and pulled hard. . .Brrrrrrrrrr....came the unpleasant noise from the saw.
            "You can't chop me down!" cried the worried white pine.
            But that's just what the woodsman intended to do, if only he could start his sluggish saw.  He pulled again, and again....
            All the while the white pine pleaded with the man not to cut into his trunk.  But