(UPI) 3/11/99

Responding to the recent discovery by Dr. Alex Shigo of the Univ. of New Hampshire that trees have non-compliant embedded chips in their root zones, the Senate Panel on Y2K readiness stated that everything possible will be done to save our trees. Chase Manhatten Chairman, Robert Greed and New England Power and Light VP, Thomas Sparks offered that since their organizations are completely Y2K compliant, they will be sending their programmers out into the forests to replace the chips. Computer expert, Bill "Shut the" Gates "after the horses are out", assured the panel that there is still plenty of time to replace the chips on the nation's 500 billion trees. Others are not so sanguine about the probability of success. USDA Forestry Chief, Gifford Pinchmeimdreaming, stated that since the fiscal year for most trees begins March 21st, we could see problems showing up in our forests and landscaping then. Secretary of Agriculture, William Geekman testified that any non-compliant trees can be used for firewood.

-- Sand Mueller (smueller@azalea.net), May 26, 1999

Answers

Some cows got into my yard the other day and the chips they left seemed to be ok?

-- freeman (freeman@cali.com), May 26, 1999.

Most institutions plan to use pencil and paper if their computer systems will not work. Since both of these are tree based, I think we have a problem if the trees are not compliant.

-- David Holladay (davidh@brailleplanet.org), May 26, 1999.