A Bicycle Eaten by a Tree.

On Vashon Island (near Seattle, Washington), a tree grows carrying a rather unusual passenger - an old bike. Apparently some kid chained a bike to the tree decades ago and never picked it up, leaving the tree no choice but to grow around the bike.

The tree and island gained some level of notoriety when Berkeley Breathed, creator of Bloom County, wrote a children’s book inspired by the bicycle eating tree entitled Red Ranger Came Calling.

Story found via The Museum of Hoaxes (but this was not a hoax), pic via Arborsmith.

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Posted on

May 25, 2007 at 6:18 pm by Anita
Category: 1 Other Neat Things

16 comments to "A Bicycle Eaten by a Tree."

Daniel Kim
May 26th, 2007 at 3:24 am
A bicycle-tree hybrid. Genetic engineering has GONE TOO FAR!
Lola
May 26th, 2007 at 3:32 am
It is hoax. Trees only grow by their tops
Jose
May 26th, 2007 at 4:59 am
How many years has the tree? Look at the bike. Is that a 50th years old bike?
David Lozano
May 26th, 2007 at 5:37 am
I think the kid still on the bike. Where is the X-ray picture?
Paul
May 26th, 2007 at 6:57 am
Lola, I agree that it’s a hoax, but if trees only grew by their tops, there would be a whole lot of really skinny trees in the world…
Katherine
May 26th, 2007 at 11:20 am
I thought this looked familiar, that’s my step-mother’s favorite childrens book. It’s cute, you should read it.
Daniel
May 26th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
It’s actually not fake. I couldn’t find it on snopes, but I found it elsewhere:

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/tips/getAttraction.php3?tip_AttractionN o==1412
ted
May 26th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
The tree is actually NOT eating the bicycle. It is simply growing around it.

If this is real, it was obviously set up a long, long time ago, and never touched since. Dubious, but not impossible.
Marcus
May 26th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
This is too good.
Allan
May 27th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Not a hoax, I’ve got a news clipping from the Oregonian (November 15, 1993) about the bike, with a pic of a man grasping the front wheel of the bike. The man, who lived in Vashon at the time, theorized that the bike had been there some 40 or 50 years.
nolhay
July 19th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
we have old trees around my house that have old barbwire (from the farm boarder) in them much like this bike
Sara
October 19th, 2007 at 11:12 am
I’ve been there - it is real, and very cool to boot. This isn’t a hoax, staged or anything of the sort - just an example of what Nature will do if need be.
Dominic
March 15th, 2008 at 4:07 am
Aron
March 15th, 2008 at 4:49 am
Joe
March 15th, 2008 at 6:58 am
Hero
March 15th, 2008 at 3:02 pm

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