Fried Bert was a small egg who lived in the forest. He was called Fried Bert because his house had once caught fire and he had narrowly escaped being horribly burned, although a part of him had been irreversibly scarred.
One day when Fried Bert was out walking, he stumbled over a tree root.
"Ah," he thought to himself, "a tree root has tripped me up. I shall have to burn the tree to the ground and tear up all of the earth in the vicinity to be sure that such a travesty does not twice occur," because he was a bad egg. So home he went.
In the twinkling of an eye he was back, carrying a vat of nitric acid. He poured it all over the base of the tree, and then returned home. As the tree sizzled and smoked, he returned once again, this time with a large tub of glycerine, which he threw over the acid from a distance. As the two liquids met, the acid began to heat up, and then mixed with the glycerine, forming a well-known explosive, which, true to form, blew up.
Viewing the smoking crater with considerable satisfaction, Fried Bert turned and headed home.
When he got there, he could not believe his eyes. A large tree, with no roots and smoke issuing from one charred, splintered end, had fallen from the sky and utterly destroyed his house!
Fried Bert exploded.