They vacuume TREES here?

One ordinary Saturday morning in late October, I left my apartment on bike to go do my Saturday grocery shopping, as I had done every other ordinary Saturday morning since late August.

Biking half-attentively along the familiar route, down tree-lined streets, I noticed something strange: there was not ONE TRACE of a leaf anywhere to be seen...though just days prior, the platain trees were more than lush and thriving...

"WTF>? Did I sleep through a freakin' HURRICANE last night? Perhaps a TORNADO?"

I continued biking along, laughing to myself, feeling a bit strange. It was like a dream...it was as though I had imagined something.

All the other trees in the neighborhood still had their leaves, and the weather certainly had not indicated any drastic changes...so I reached the conclusion that someone had removed the trees' leaves, perhaps due to some biological plague...(?)

About 4 days later, leaving work on bike, I noticed another line of trees whose leaves were missing...and when I say these trees were BARE...I mean BARE; it was like the Ren and Stimpy episode where Ren loses his teeth thus exposing his loose gums and nerve endings...

figuring there was some plague hitting the treets in Strasbourg, I tried inspecting the trees. They looked fine...? SO STRANGE!

It was not until one late night, leaving from a bar, a little bit tipsy, that I found the answer to this phenomenon! Tracing my steps back from a public square near my workplace, I spotted a truck with a ladder-lifted plank risen in the air, upon which a man stood with a gigantic vacuume. A TREE VACUUME.

"VOOOOOOM!" little by little, the guy SUCKED OFF every leaf from the tree with his over-sized white vacuume contraption, leaving the branches bare and twiggy.

I wanted to ask WHY THE HELL he would do such a thing, but I figured I'd sound like a "silly American" (not that I didn't hear that or feel that way every day) and decided to keep my mouth closed.

I resolved to ask some collegues what was going on, and at first they acted like I was crazy. "What do you mean? The leaves just FELL!" they told me. I couldn't tell if they were joking...but, I realized later that they had not noticed the bare trees lining the streets. I guess the advantage of biking and walking around so much is that you pick up on these things...

Pointing out to a collegue one afternoon the absence of leaves (down the same street I had initially travelled down that ordinary Saturday morning) I insisted that the city men had taken the leaves away...(again, feeling like a paranoid crazy-lady, searching mysterious for "the others,") but it was quickly understood:

"Oh sure, THOSE trees' leaves are removed to prevent their naturally-slow fall. If they remove them now, the city avoids the monotonous task of sweeping the streets."

Though I knew very well at this point how well-kept the city parks and streets are in Strasbourg, I didn't know why the leaf-covered streets were of any concern, but my collegue explained that pedestrians could easily slip on the leaves, given the amount of rainy, slippery days in Strasbourg...

"OH sure!" I thought to myself..."HOW CONSISTENT!" Paris doesn't have ramps, handicapped access, operating elevators or escalators to access the most crucial of desintations, but Strasbourg worries about old people walking around the leaf-covered backstreets going nowhere!!!! hahaha. I love the French.