My
Sword of Damocles.
During this past horrible winter, we had a bout of thundersnow. Like a thunderstorm in the summer with snow instead of rain. Well, during that storm, one of my neighbor's sassafras trees got hit by lightning, splitting it in half. One half fell into the woods in the neighbor's yard, the other, bigger, piece fell on one of my trees over the compost. It's hung there since the middle of December and hasn't moved. It would creak and moan in the wind but stayed put.

Well, Saturday, I was back there with the dogs when I heard noises unfamiliar coming from the tree. The Mrs. was shopping and I threw the girls into the kennel because they were getting too curious about the noise. I watched for about a half-hour as shit began falling, little branches at first, and then some of the bigger ones. The Mrs. came home and asked what I was doing and told her to hang around. It would be like a bad death scene in a B-movie. It took 2 hours, but it finally fell, the branch it was leaning on finally breaking.

Thing is, instead of coming all the way down, it hung up in the crotch of another branch. So, guess what I did on Father's Day?

Being I worked for a tree sturgeon (sturgeon - because he drank like a fish; there'd be a case of Budweiser on the front seat of the truck before we got to the first job in the morning) when I was 16, I pretty much know what I'm doing with trees. I got the chain saw out and started sawing branches off, allowing it to twist (with a little help from me) and leverage itself out of the crotch. It came down with a satisfying thump. I looked around to see all the neighbors watching me. No applause though ...


My only bitch now is that the branch it was leaning on didn't break cleanly and is still hanging up there. I gotta get a new blade for my chain saw, it's horribly stretched and I'm out of adjustment, before I start cutting up the logs. Shouldn't have used it yesterday but the tree was
really unsafe and I had to bring it down.
That's tomorrow's job.

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