THE TREE INCIDENT

Yesterday started out so nice---sunshine and temps rising into the 60’s.  The morning was peaceful with the chirping of birds and baying of the hounds next door.  I dragged Max out of bed, finally, at about the crack of noon (actually just after 11) and he leisurely ate a bowl of cereal while watching some inane movie on TV.  Hubby had gone out to his mushroom lair, his new super-quiet MP3 player earplugs firmly pressed into his ears, listening to a non-fiction book.  The unsettling roar of a chainsaw seemed too close for comfort outside, but I figured it was just the neighbor preparing firewood.   Then Max announced that “someone just came through our front gate!”  I dashed out the back and met our neighbor (the one with the hounds) as he strode up the driveway.  “Is Steve around?” he asked.  I guided him to where Hubby stood, with drill in hand in the mushroom area.  The neighbor exclaimed, “I’m taking down a tree and it might fall on your pump house.”  He motioned Steve to follow, explaining to us that the tree had some dead limbs in it and he didn’t want it to fall on our property so he was taking the whole tree down.  He’d already been attacking it with his chainsaw at the base and had a long cable running to his pick-up truck on the other side of his yard, in hopes of preventing the tree from falling our way.  However, as he pointed out, the tree leaned our way.  He also said that the arborists were too expensive to consider and that he and his two friends could take this tree down just fine.

Needless to say, we moved the boat, our trailer and van along with my car, which was in the carport.  Still, that tree looked awful tall to me (Steve thought it was about 85 feet tall).  If it came our way, it could wipe out the carport and possible the back of our house (mostly Max’s and our bedrooms).  If it fell towards the street, it would take out the power, telephone and cable lines and cause other related problems.  The only safe place for it to fall was directly opposite our place---in his front yard.  Well, the neighbor and his buddies (did they really know what they were doing?) decided to throw a line from the top of our pump house, up into the tree, hoping to snare a major limb and pull the tree in the opposite direction.  They managed to hit a limb with their rope and pull the entire thing down into our yard, wiping out our fence.  By that time, we were really nervous and left our house.  As we stood in the back yard, talking to our neighbors, one of the men decided to climb the tree and chainsaw some of the lower limbs, that promptly fell in our yard and the ditch.  Keep in mind he was up in that tree that had been almost entirely sawed through at its base. (Of course, these young guys didn’t wear any wimpy safety glasses or ear protection when wielding their chainsaws!)  Well, our other neighbor suggested we call the power company, because it looked certain that the power lines would be hit.  I tried that and the power people suggested I contact 911 and they’d send out a fire-truck.  I also did that and the truck appeared only about five minutes later. As we stood there talking to the fire people, the tree began to crackle and snap.  The neighbor guy ran up to it with his saw attacking the side towards their house.  The tree slowly toppled-----right into their front yard, barely scraping the front of his garage and dog pen.  A cheer rose from the guys next door!  We all breathed a sigh of relief and thanked the fire guys for being so prompt! Thank goodness it all came out OK!

It took my stomach several hours to settle down after that stressful event.  I’m just so grateful it didn’t go all wrong---for us and for them.  Just the tree was the only thing sacrificed…