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SEATTLE - Western Washington residents this morning experienced an unprecedented assault on their homes, businesses, and modes of transportation by a fiercely determined band of fir trees.

Typical of the attacks was the invasion launched at a house in Sammamish through whose roof a 70-foot fir came crashing this morning. One person in the house required five stitches as a result of the attack; an infant in the house was "buried in ceiling insulation and had to be dug out."

Several other homes also reported direct hits from individual trees. At least one Bellevue office had a tree break through the roof and into a walll.

Many firs made their attacks on the power grid, bringing down lines around the area and leaving many residents without power for several hours on Wednesday morning.

One local school bus ride took a terrifying turn this morning as a 50-foot tree crashed down on top of the bus, crushing the roof only a few inches from the driver and several children on their way to school. "It was like a bomb going off," says the driver, aptly identifying the unprovoked smashing of her bus for the act of aggression that it was.

Astonishingly, the trees managed to hit another school bus in the same wave of attacks. Another school bus in Tukwila was ambushed by a tree whose falling sent the driver to the hospital with minor injuries.

Meteorologists warn that the high winds arriving in western Washington and Oregon on Thursday will probably trigger another wave of falling trees. Local mills encouraged residents to take preemptive action by clear-cutting all remaining stands of fir trees in the area, noting their own willingness to process the remains at no cost to the brave volunteer forces destroying them. "We shouldn't stand for this kind of audacious attack on our homes, our schools, and our workplaces," said a spokesman who prefers to remain anonymous. "We must take down the trees before they take us down."

Authorities note that appropriately-sized tree remains may be put to use as holiday decorations. "I hear they need some more decorated trees at Sea-Tac," said one police officer in north Seattle. Others suggested sending a tougher message to trees still standing by cutting up the remains of fallen trees and using them as firewood.