If a tree falls...

Right in the middle of watching the Oscars this afternoon we heard an almighty cracking sound coming from outside.
A boab tree next door had fallen over in what was only a moderate wind – the bottom was completely rotten:

The noise scared the hell out of poor little Biscuit but more frightening was the smell. It stank to high heaven, as my mother would say, a putrid, burnt-meat-mixed-with-fertiliser stench I've never experienced. Vegetal death. Lord knows what caused it but hours later you can still detect it in the yard.

Nature's wonders are sometimes not so wonderful.