//------------------------------//
// Cachinnation 
// Story: Excess 
// by Twinkletail 
//------------------------------//

Trees were funny.

Why were trees funny, exactly? They were just big, tall plants with really hard trunks, and sometimes fruits grew along with the leaves. That shouldn't have been funny.

Whether or not it should have been funny didn't seem to matter at the moment, though. Pinkie Pie was laughing at it either way.

The ponies of Ponyville didn't seem to find this behavior to be the least bit odd. If somepony else was doing it, then sure, it might have raised more than a few eyebrows. But this was Pinkie Pie, the ever-joyful party pony. She could find the humor in practically anything. In fact, some of the ponies who passed her even stopped to have a laugh at the tree as well. They didn't see anything particularly funny about it, but chances were that whatever Pinkie was laughing about had gone right over their heads. Sure, they were confused, but her joy was infectious. Plus, they didn't want to look like they didn't understand the joke, and it rarely hurt to enjoy a good laugh.

The one pony who was the most confused by Pinkie's behavior, though, was Pinkie herself.

There was absolutely no reason for her to be laughing at this tree. Other trees? Maybe. There were some trees that warranted laughter. She'd seen trees that were growing diagonally, and that was kind of funny. Some trees had silly-looking shapes, like that one weeping willow whose leaves looked like a green version of Fluttershy's mane if you squinted and looked at it from the right angle. And even though the incident was forever linked to her marefriend getting hurt, Pinkie could never hold her giggles in when she passed the one spruce near Pokey Oaks Elementary that Rainbow Dash had crashed into fifteen Tuesdays ago. She could swear that part of the trunk had an indentation of Dashie's nose in it, and if that wasn't funny, she wasn't really sure what was.

But she was sure of what wasn't funny, and that was this one particular tree. It grew straight up into the air. It wasn't shaped like anything but a tree. And although it was entirely possible that Dashie had crashed into it at some point, given her tendency to do things like that, it certainly didn't have any lasting marks to show for it, especially not a Dashie noseprint.

It was the third-oldest tree in Ponyville, and it topped the list of Ponyville's most boring trees (a list which Pinkie created by taking Twilight's list of Ponyville's most interesting trees and flipping it upside-down). To make things even less funny, it was clear by the shape it was in that it was dying, and if there was anything that made something unfunny, it was that something beginning to die. Pinkie couldn't think of a single instance in which death made something more funny; a situation made all the more confusing by the fact that a pony who was very good at stand-up comedy was often said to be "killing." This was of little relevance to the matter at hoof, though, and she chose to store that thought away and ponder it further another time.

And it wasn't even the first object or situation of dubious entertainment value that she had laughed at since yesterday's picnic. She and Dashie had gone pranking right after the picnic, which was always fun and worth its fair share of laughs. Everything had been going just fine and dandy until the last prank of the day. Pinkie had painted a door on a nearby wall and hung a sign advertising free churros on the other side of it. She and Dashie then hid in a bush, waiting for somepony to fall for it. When they noticed Bon-Bon approaching, they figured that she would attempt to use the doorknob, only to find that it was painted on. What they certainly did not expect her to do was rush at the door and attempt to burst through it. The first thought Pinkie had was to apologize profusely to the poor mare as Dashie helped her up, but she instead found herself doubled over with laughter. Laughing at a pony in pain was not nice at all, but she couldn't get herself to stop, and was thankful for Dashie defending her when Bon-Bon was understandably angry.

The two agreed (once Pinkie's laughter died down) that they had done enough pranking for the day, and returned to their homes. Pinkie was still a bit thrown by her uncharacteristic actions before, but decided that something unrelated must have just tickled her brain at the same moment. Luckily, the Cakes had cooked a nice, tasty dinner that would surely take her mind off of it. She would often give a little laugh at the sub-par jokes Mr. Cake would make at the dinner table so his feelings wouldn't be hurt, but her raucous laughter at what may very well have been his worst joke yet was enough to even raise the twins' eyebrows. Once she finally realized that the entire family was staring at her, Pinkie decided to excuse herself. Perhaps she needed sleep.

It took a good few hours for Pinkie to finally fall asleep. Each time she was nearly there, she found herself thinking of something funny. Then she would spend a good five minutes trying to stop the little giggles that would spill out of her, and by the time she did, she was wide awake again. She had laid down at about 7:30, and the last time she remembered seeing on her clock before falling asleep was 11:24. Granted, she would often stay awake until later, but the fact that she was making a conscious effort to fall asleep earlier and couldn't just made it seem later than it was. To make things even stranger, Mrs. Cake informed her the next morning that she'd overheard her giggling in her sleep. This in itself wasn't strange; she often laughed in her sleep when she was having a particularly funny dream. What was strange was the fact that it had been loud enough for the Cakes to hear.

Pinkie chose to eat her breakfast on the run; things were getting too weird for her, and even she had to admit that when things got too weird for Pinkie Pie, they were definitely too weird overall. She had every intent to see Twilight, because whenever something strange happened, Twilight knew exactly how to fix it, or at least had a good idea. It was then that she was interrupted by the sight of the funny tree that wasn't actually funny, and it was here that she found herself overflowing with laughter.

"Pinkie Pie!" a voice called out. Pinkie turned her attention to the source of the voice; her friend Carrot Top

"Oh, hi Carrot Top!" Pinkie said between laughs.

"Hello..." Carrot said, head tilted. "You're not...laughing at this tree, are you?"

"I..." Pinkie started to answer, but she was interrupted by a guffaw. She covered her mouth and tried to innocently shake her head.

"Why?" Carrot asked, clearly not buying it. "Of all things to laugh at! You do know this tree's dying, right? It's being cut down tomorrow. It's a shame, isn't it? It's been here so long, even longer than most of the ponies in town, and after tomorrow, it'll be gone."

Pinkie Pie exploded into laughter. Before the befuddled Carrot could question her further, Pinkie took off on a wild dash towards the library.