I went through all the Adobe troubleshooting steps. I made sure it was enabled, I made sure the "allow" box was checked, and I went to [User]/Library/Preferences, where I was supposed to trash the Macromedia folder -- but there was no such folder there. The animated tire-swing on the tree is animated normally at Flash Player Help
I don't know what else to do. "Flash Player" turns up nothing in Spotlight except Flash Player Install Manager.