Comments & Curiosities:

Do you love them? I love them. Mysteries, that is. Other things too, of course, but I can’t get enough when it comes to mysteries.

And thanks to 285 or so cable TV channels this is the Golden Age of mysteries. “Law & Order,” “Forensic Files,” “The First 48,” and if a rerun of one of those isn’t on, which doesn’t seem possible, there’s always “Dateline,” “48 Hours” or “20/20.” Does art imitate life or does life imitate art? I have no idea.

But in our own little corner of the universe, a number of mysteries have emerged, popped up, bubbled to the surface. First, there are the tree murders. The Lorax may speak for the trees but apparently he was on a break when someone or ones chopped down a stand of towering cedar pines near the model railroad in Fairview Park in the middle of the night.

Three mornings between late August and mid-September, model railroad volunteers and others showed up to find the towering cedar pines hacked off a few feet above the ground. How weird is that?

“The trees were slashed in the middle of the night,” said Lori Tolan with the Orange County Model Engineers. “They are very selective. They pass by all these trees and go straight to the cedar pines.”

What was a beautiful canopy of cedar pines now looks like Mt. Saint Helens after the boom but without the ash. Elsewhere in the park, someone, maybe the same perpetrator, maybe not, has been ripping branches off cottonwoods and sycamores, from saplings to mature trees.

Worse yet, the tree murders aren’t limited to Fairview Park. Two almost identical tree bashings happened in Canyon Park.

Exactly what is going on in someone’s mind that would make them sneak around in the middle of the night and chop down beautiful, mature trees? Actually, never mind. Sorry I asked. Theories, anyone?

The frontrunners so far are that someone was on full buzz because the trees were blocking their view. Not likely, said Costa Mesa Maintenance Services Manager Bruce Hartley, since there were nearly identical incidents in two different parks.

Another theory is that someone is all bollixed up about non-native species in Fairview Park. Also not likely, according to me. Like most parks, there’s not much left of what was there 100 years ago. Why pick on the trees?

The last theory is that it’s someone who has a thing about the model railroad — a theory that Lori Tolan says is not worth its hypothesis.

“I don’t know anybody that doesn’t love the trains,” Tolan said.

Actually it reminds of the Mystery of the Mad Locker. In 2002, someone was snapping padlocks on the chain-link fences on the Fairview/405 overpass and the Bay Street/55 overpass – and not a few padlocks.

We’re talking about 35 or 40 locks on each overpass. No one ever found out who or why, but the city of Costa Mesa and Caltrans got really tired of sending workers out there with bolt cutters to snip off lots of old, rusty locks.

If you’re having trouble figuring out why someone goes out in the middle of the night and chops down trees in a park, let me know how it goes with why someone walks onto a freeway overpass at 2 a.m. and snaps old padlocks onto the fence. Just another lesson that whenever you think you’ve seen all the weird stuff there is to see…you are mistaken.

Then there is the Mystery of the Rings. At the Belmont Village Crown Cove senior home in Corona del Mar, two women had pricey rings slipped off their fingers while they slept. The first ring-jacking was last June, when an 86-year-old resident’s $8,000 diamond ring was slipped off her finger while she slept.

The second was on or about Sept. 26, when a 95-year-old resident said a $15,000 ring that was a gift from her late husband was not only slipped off her finger while she slept, but replaced with another ring.

In both cases, Belmont Village managers called the Newport Beach PD immediately, but here is the kicker. Shortly after word got out that Newport’s finest were on the case, the rings magically appeared, slipped under a manager’s door during the night. Not too many theories needed on the Mystery of the Rings, thank you.

If you’ve watched enough “Law & Orders,” it should take you about 12.5 seconds to figure out how that one is going to end.

On the other hand, will the tree killer or killers ever be caught or, like the Mad Locker, will they quietly slip into the folder marked “Weird Stuff/Newport-Mesa/Unsolved?”

While the tree killer/killers were smart enough not to crank up a chain saw in the middle of the night, they were not smart enough to take the handsaw they used to do the deed with them. You don’t need to watch a lot of crime shows to know that leaving the murder weapon behind is a bad thing. One good print and a little DNA from a cut or a scrape might just do it.

I think that’s it then — the Mystery of the Rings, the Mad Locker and a serial tree killer. It’s better the Lorax wasn’t around to see this.

“I am the Lorax who speaks for the trees, which you seem to be chopping as fast as you please. But I’m also in charge of the Brown Bar-ba-loots, who played in the shade in their Bar-ba-loot suits and happily lived eating Truffula Fruits. Now thanks to your hacking my trees to the ground, there’s not enough Truffula Fruit to go ’round.”

I can’t speak for the Bar-ba-loots and I have no idea where you get Truffula fruit, Trader Joe’s maybe, but if you or anyone else knows anything about the late great trees, please call the city at (714) 754-5123. They’ll get the bad guys sooner or later. They always do. I’ve seen it. A lot. I gotta go.

PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs Sundays. He may be reached at [email protected].