Chapter 10

10 THE EVENING BREEZE BENDS THE TALL GRASS AT THE BASE OF the chain-link fence surrounding the Midville Wind Farm. The wind picks up, stirs leaves, bends branches, and pushes the giant fiberglass blades of a twenty-five-meter-tall white wind turbine into spinning motion. The wind whips across the ridge above the Midville Woods and quickly sets the whole long line of windmill propellers spinning.

The spinning blades turn the shafts in the generators. The turning shafts force electrons to move in an electric current. Just inside the Midville Wind Farm fence, Mr. Chimp belts himself into the driver's seat of his latest machine. It's his own invention, the DemoMonster—with crushing jaws on a boom neck, and two extendable hammer arms. Mr. Chimp signs to Edison: "You are such an old lady, with your seat belts and safety helmets," says Edison. But he buckles his seat belt. And it's a good thing he does. Because Mr.

Chimp stomps on the gas, jams the crusher boom forward with a jolt, and crumples the first turbine shaft in its steel jaws with a shriek of ripping metal and crack of exploding concrete base. Edison holds on to the sides of his seat, riding it like a bucking bronco. "My goodness," says Edison.

Mr. Chimp's DemoMonster chomps and hammers and smashes and crashes one wind turbine after another.

Edison smiles more than he ever has. "Oh my, oh my. Such destruction. No more electricity from this wind farm. Now that's what I call Building Our Future." Mr. Chimp nods. Mr. Chimp hoots. Mr. Chimp sends another towering wind turbine crashing to earth.