Trees
Created | Updated Jun 6, 2005
Trees are enormously useful things. They provide shade, food, and versatile building materials, and run on CO2, H2O and sunlight.
Unfortunately, their metabolism produces toxic byproducts: namely oxygen, a searing corrosive, invisible, orderless gas which is the downfall of trees, as, with the proper application of heat, it supports the explosive combustion of their bodies. Also, a class of organisms has developed which thrive on oxygen and do all sorts of nasty and destructive things to their benefactors: burrowing through them, nibbling parts off them, and mashing them up to manufacture massive quantities of disposable packaging material.