Timber!

Back in June when a particularly strong group of storms rolled through, the yard didn't lose one tree. Even with sustained high winds, they all stood strong. However, a couple night later a not nearly-as-strong storm rolled through the area. That was when I looked out the front window to discover a tree across the driveway, finally giving an answer to the age-old question of, "If a tree falls when "PTI" is on, will anyone hear it hit the ground?" (Nope.) More disturbing than realizing my hearing is so bad I didn't hearing a large tree hit the ground was looking inside the trunk and discovering that it was pretty much hollow. It appeared that termites and various other critters had made quite the meal of this tree. Also, now that it had fallen over there were no insects to be found, leading me to think they had scattered and moved on to another of the surrounding trees.

Naturally, this made me concerned that another tree was slowly being hollowed out by a small army of insects and could fall on a whim. There was one tree in particular that worried me. Across the driveway was, by all appearances, a mostly-dead oak tree. The top of it didn't have any branches and the bark had started to come off near the middle. At the very least it looked a lot worse for wear than the tree that had just fallen. I figured this was the next tree to go and spent almost all of Hurricane Irene opening the front door to check if it was either in the street on lying on top of my neighbor's car. Thus, it was decided that a professional was going to have to cut that tree down before nature came and knocked it down, because at least that way it was controlled. I had visions of the guy just walking over and giving it few solid shoves before it collapsed into a heap of sawdust.

Turns out I don't know much about trees.

The crew of three that showed up this morning had a hell of a time bringing that thing down. They had guide ropes so two of them could pull from the top while the third guy was cutting away at the bottom. The two guys manning the rope were tugging for all their worth and this tree still didn't budge. After quite a few swipes with the chainsaw, the guy in charge of cutting ended up going back to the truck and getting a couple of wedges and a sledgehammer to try and create a larger gap in the tree trunk. It certainly didn't seem like this tree was going to come down without a fight. And it obviously didn't have the termite problem the first tree had. In fact, the trunk was so thick they couldn't even put it through their normal wood-chipper and had to come back later with the special truck which carries nothing but huge trees. (That truck was equipped with a special grabbing claw on the back. I bet the guy who operates it is amazing at the claw game in the arcade. I picture his house as just filled to the rafters with poorly-made stuffed animals of cartoon characters which break all types of copyright laws.)

Still, I feel kind of bad about taking that tree down because now that I have seen how healthy it actually was I'm left to wonder just how long it might have lasted if it had been left alone. It's kind of like thinking your goldfish is dead and going to flush him down the toilet, only to have the little guy start swimming for his life once the whirlpool starts. By the time you realize your mistake, it's too late. Then again, I don't feel too bad about it because not having that tree there really opens up that corner of the yard. I guess the lesson of the day is that, just like people, you can never tell how healthy a tree is just by looking at it.