What If a Tree Falls and No One Hears It?

I got home at about 6:30 last night. We sat around in the living room for a while listening to my son play all his upcoming band concert songs on his new French horn. We wandered into the kitchen, made a dinner salad, and ate it. Needless to say, like every other household blessed with air conditioning, we were running it with the windows closed during yesterday's sauna-like conditions (low 90s and dew point close to 70, which is more Gulf-state than Minnesota).

Anyway, after dinner we sat in the kitchen for a while, and then I thought I'd go back into the living room where there's an overhead fan. And there, filling the view from our large picture window, was a massive section of our neighbor's honey locust tree, which on this windless day of all days had cracked and fallen right into the circle we live on, without our hearing a thing.