Stump Lady

Today in Moncton it was a bright and sunny day. Cole and I decided to go for a walk in the park up the road from our apartment building. We set off and walked for a while before settling into our spot on one of the park benches to enjoy the sunshine. Moments after we had gotten comfortable we noticed an older woman walking towards us, she looked to be about 40 - 50 years old. We noticed there was something a little odd about this woman. Cole whispered over to me "Ugh, is she going to come talk to us?" I nervously watched as she walked closer and closer, BUT, she stopped at an old tree stump a few feet away. We watched as she knelt down and picked up a tiny little stick and started to tap the stick against the stump. We talked quietly for a bit with the clear sound of stick-tapping-stump in our ears. I couldn't contain myself any longer, tears sprung from my eyes as I laughed and tried to ignore the fact that she had been poking the stump with her stick for almost 20 minutes. We got up from our bench and found another one further away - stump lady still in full view. We watched for another 40 minutes with the faint "tap tap tap" sounds coming from her direction as she worked away on that stump - just poking away at it with her stick. We couldn't understand what she was doing. We came up with lots of ideas as to why she was doing this. "Is she just like mental?" "Did she escape from her home and a care taker is looking for her?" "Maybe she's homeless and has to tap the stump to get bugs to come out to eat?" "Maybe we'll come back here tomorrow and she'll have sculpted the Mona Lisa out of that dumb stump."  We had no idea how long she would continue to do this, we had planned to stay there until she left, but she never did. The next day we went back to check out the stump...but there was nothing special about it, just a ripped up stump with a little hole in it from where she had been poking it for hours. I'll never look at that stump the same way again.