The Man who Ate a Tree

I was house-sitting in a mansion on the road to Kiambu, when I met a security guard who likes to eat trees. “I can eat a tree each day”, Patric told me. I listened in disbelief while he shared of his eating exploits, but I soon found his words to be true. In fact, Patric once planted an entire forest and proceeded to eat the whole thing. “An eight-foot trunk makes for a good lunch”, he would often say. Patric’s favorite food of course was the sweet stump of the sugarcane plant. Sometimes he would go for several days and eat nothing but sugarcane. “It gives me energy to stay awake and guard the compound at night.”