I suddenly remembered that we hadn’t filled the tree stand with water. It was close to 10:30 so I went and filled a 2 litre bottle and dumped it in. As I was checking the height of the water, disaster struck.
I saw a puddle form from underneath the stand and start to get bigger. Immediately I knew that the stand had cracked and that all the water was draining out. I ran downstairs to grab some dog towel to sop up the mess, but of course they are still in a box somewhere. I managed to find two quickly and ran back upstairs.
My commotion roused Sue from bed, and she gave me a hand cleaning up the mess. Wow, 2 litres of water makes a very large puddle that can flow very quickly. Luckily it hadn’t reached any boxes, furniture, or pictures. We then tried to figure out how we could submerge the tree, or the stand. We decided that there wasn’t anything we could do at that time of night and headed to bed.
It was too bad we hadn’t filled the tree stand before I went out, but it was a good thing the crack wasn’t a slow leak and that I saw it right away. Crisis averted though, I bought a new tree stand the next day.