The news this morning has been full of reports of a man in a tree near Magnolia holding up Sounder Northline commuter trains. The good news is the man was talked down from his perch at 8:45 a.m., according to KOMO. The bad news, at least for commuters, is many of them were held up on the train for roughly an hour before being ushered onto buses in Edmonds.

As KOMO reports, the man was first discovered by passing motorists who heard someone calling for help around 5:30 a.m. near 34th Avenue West and Gilman Avenue West – which marked the start of a roughly three-hour standoff. When police arrived the man was found nearly 40 feet up a tree, and police negotiators were called in to help get him down.

That was just the start of the bizarre scene.

According to KOMO:

While a police negotiator tried to talk the man into coming down, the man instead took his clothes off and tied them to branches, according to police. According to police, the was acting erratic, coming half way down the tree before climbing right back up.

What led the man to these strange heights? Well, there’s a decent chance the impetus for his tree scaling had to do with the fact that police believe the man broke into his ex-girlfriend’s house 10 blocks away and busted some windows … in addition to her male roommate’s leg or foot.

But perhaps it was much simpler than that. As KOMO reports, when asked why he was up in the tree the man replied succinctly, “I like to climb.”

In discussing the situation this morning over coffee and baffled looks, Seattle Weekly’s Ellis Conklin hypothesized the man may be a confused – perhaps even sociopathic – social climber.