Kite-Eating Tree
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The Kite-Eating Tree is a fictional tree featured in the comic strip Peanuts created by Charles M. Schulz.
The Kite-Eating Tree is a deciduous tree of indeterminate type. According to Charlie Brown, it is impossible to tell a kite-eating tree from non-kite-eating by sight until it catches a kite in its branches, which it slowly devours.
Many of the kites that Charlie Brown attempted to fly were eaten by the Kite-Eating Tree. Once Lucy van Pelt threw Schroeder's piano into the Kite-Eating Tree, which it also ate. Once, the tree ate one of Charlie Brown's kites, and Lucy shouted at it so loudly that it not only regurgitated that kite, but also a flood of other people's kites.
Charlie Brown once threatened the Kite-Eating Tree that if it took a bite out of his kite, he would bite it, which he did, thus getting himself in trouble with the Environmental Protection Agency. He ran away to avoid being sent to jail and became the coach of a baseball team of very small children. Later, Linus van Pelt convinced Charlie Brown that it was safe to come home, because the tree had fallen over in a rainstorm; nonetheless, the Kite-Eating Tree later returned. (This storyline was adaptated into animation in It's An Adventure, Charlie Brown.)
Presumably the Kite-Eating Tree can even distinguish between different "flavors" of kites; in a 1982 strip, Charlie Brown wonders what "flavor" kite he should give the tree this year, and finally settles on lemon, since he took strawberry the year before.
In a 1995 strip, Linus shows great concern because of the tree's presence, wondering what kind of world he was living in that a Kite-Eating Tree could exist. Later that year, Lucy threatens to throw Linus' blanket into the tree; not long afterwards, she actually did.
