Police in Seattle continue to try to figure out what to do about a man who scaled an 80-foot tree on Tuesday and seems to have no plans to come down. The bearded man climbed the huge tree outside a Macy's store downtown around 11am and pelted cops and medics with an apple, pine cones, and branches, the Seattle Times reports. He managed to spend the night in the sequoia despite chilly temperatures. Police initially closed off streets in the area but were reopening them on Wednesday. They say the man, who claimed to be carrying a knife, appears to be suffering some kind of mental health crisis and their first priority is his safety. Meanwhile, KOMO is live-streaming the unusual standoff.
The climber, believed to be a local homeless man, has "just been up in the tree for a few hours now, cussing at people and throwing pine cones," a witness told the Times on Tuesday. Phoenix Jones, Seattle's own superhero, arrived at the scene Tuesday night but was unable to coax the man down with an offer of a sandwich and a beer, Q13 reports. Perhaps inevitably, #ManInTree became an Internet sensation, the Daily Dot reports. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that spoof Twitter accounts have been created for the man, a firefighter who climbed a ladder to try to talk to him, and the tree itself. (Cops in Illinois pulled over a woman with a slightly smaller tree stuck in her grille.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
