A crack investigative team from Cheap Seats Daily has obtained samples of the wood chips that nannies all over NW DC blame for a boo-boo outbreak at Pierce Park.

First, here is a pile of the late, lamented chips that used to cover the Adams Morgan playground and, the way the nannies tell it, break kids’ falls like so many soft pillows:

(AFTER THE JUMP: visual evidence of the boo-boo causers!)

And now here are the new, dastardly toothpick-like shards that, since being spread all over the playground, have splintered kids and turned Pierce Park into Pierced Park:

Don’t get your eyes too close to the screen while looking at the second batch! They’re that sharp!

We’ve got calls into our favorite DC agency, the Department of Parks and Recreation, to find out who replaced the safe chunks of the past with the newfangled shards of today and why!

Let the chips where they may…