CAMBRIDGE – Another tractor-trailer has been lured to its doom by the dangerous creatures who lurk in and around Smuggler’s Notch. The sirens use their voices to magically enchant truck drivers onto Notch Road, generally on the Cambridge side of the pass, and then watch as the drivers literally destroy themselves on the dangerous rocks. The sirens have been a problem for millennia, and local officials are struggling with how to handle them.

“I honestly don’t know what else we can do,” says frustrated fire chief Alan Cary. “We’ve put up huge blinking neon signs, posted warnings both online and all over town, and we’ve even started going up to truckers personally to beg them to use earplugs when driving in and around Cambridge and Jeffersonville, but nothing seems to work. And I know these guys aren’t stupid. There’s no way any of them are driving their trucks into the notch intentionally. But once you hear that song, you really don’t have a choice.”

The truck drivers themselves are also at a loss. The subject of the sirens came up at a recent Teamsters union meeting, although there was some confusion when non-locals confused the magical sirens of death with emergency police sirens. No solution was settled on for dealing with the Smuggler’s Notch sirens, although there was agreement that, in the case of the other kind of sirens, truckers should slow down and pull to the side of the road.

“I can’t explain it,” said Randy Janssen, the trucker who recently got his truck wedged into the rocks. “I was driving through town, making my deliveries, no intention of heading over to Stowe or anything, but then I hear this music. I can’t even describe it. It was like, if Trisha Yearwood and Patsy Cline had a baby, and that baby was an evil demon with magical singing powers, or something like that. Like I said, I can’t describe it. Anyways, I just started driving toward the music, and I knew, deep down, that I shouldn’t do it, but I couldn’t help myself. I saw the neon warning signs, but it was like someone else was driving my rig, and then BAM! Right into the rocks. And then the music was gone. It’s kind of embarrassing actually, plus I don’t know how I’m going to pay for the truck.”

For now, truck drivers are being advised to avoid Mount Mansfield entirely until the Vermont Department of Transportation can finish developing the sonic weapon it has been working on for the past decade.

Image Credits: Lamoille Country Planning Commission.