Tuesday Funnies: Berkeley Protester Falls from Tree, Blames School

November 13th, 2007 6:10 PM

Who needs Hollywood writers when real life is typically much funnier?

To prove the point, a protester at the University of California, Berkeley, fell out of a tree Sunday evening, fortunately only breaking his wrist and ankle.

The punch line?

He thought it was the school's fault for putting fences around the trees in order to prevent folks from climbing them.

Of course, the injured tree-hugger could have blamed his injuries on President Bush, but, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, I digress (emphasis added for your entertainment pleasure, h/t Michael Savage):

One of the tree-sitting protesters in a grove of oaks next to UC Berkeley's Memorial Stadium was in the hospital Monday after taking a bone-breaking fall.

Nathaniel Hill, who fell at least 30 feet on Sunday night, was in stable condition at Highland Hospital in Oakland, a nursing supervisor at the hospital said.

[...]

Protesters have been illegally occupying a grove of oak trees next to the stadium since December. They seek to block construction of a $117 million athletic training center for Cal football players and other athletes.

A judge is expected to rule as early as this week on three lawsuits seeking to block construction of the center.

[...]

When he fell, inside the fenced area, he had been trying to reach a traverse line running from a tree inside the fenced area to a tree outside the fenced area, he said...Hill said that if UC hadn't put fences around the site, then there would have been no need for the traverse line that he'd been trying to reach.

You really can't make this stuff up.