It's a Holiday for a Hanging

Forget Plamegate. Forget Katrina. Forget Iraq. The #1 news story of 2005 is this item from the Associated Press. The headline:

Suicide Mistaken for Halloween Decoration

This is among the saddest/most hilarious articles I have ever read in my entire life.

FREDERICA, Del. - The apparent suicide of a woman found hanging from a tree went unreported for hours because passers-by thought the body was a Halloween decoration, authorities said.

The 42-year-old woman used rope to hang herself across the street from some homes on a moderately busy road late Tuesday or early Wednesday, state police said.

Okay, first question...Could this possibly be deliberate? I mean, how often to people hang themselves from trees on a public street? She must have thought that someone might try to stop her if she hung herself in public...unless she did it right before Halloween when people hang fake corpses from trees!

If this is intentional, it's officially the coolest suicide ever. Not that I'm encouraging you impressionable young children out there to try suicide. But if you do feel that your life is worthless and want to end it all, please try to do so in a funny or ironic way that will provide those of us you leave behind with a chuckle or two at work.

Thanks.

The body, suspended about 15 feet above the ground, could be easily seen from passing vehicles.
State police spokesman Cpl. Jeff Oldham and neighbors said people noticed the body at breakfast time Wednesday but dismissed it as a holiday prank. Authorities were called to the scene more than three hours later.

Who eventually figured out it wasn't a decoration? That must have been some scene, huh?

"Hey, wait you guys...This dummy is amazing! It looks really real! And what's that smell? I think this stuffed dummy has crapped its pants...Oh, wait a minute..."

"They thought it was a Halloween decoration," Fay Glanden, wife of Mayor William Glanden, told The (Wilmington) News Journal.

"It looked like something somebody would have rigged up," she said.

Well, Fay, it was something somebody rigged up. Just not how you think...