Outside of our little house on our little side street, kitty corner from our little community cemetery (if a cemetery can look quaint, this one does), we have a very large tree. For this post, lets call the tree Wanda, because A) it’s fun to give plants names. B) Wanda is a particularly fun name C) I was going to call this post “A Tree Called Wanda” before deciding that it was too much of a stretch, but still I grew (pun) attached to the name. You will too.
So Wanda is a significantly large tree that provides shade to both our car space on the left (while also providing a perch for the birds to lay down a nice base coat of bird shit on my windshield) and our front porch behind. On the opposite side of Wanda there is an old fashioned Lincoln-log style wooden fence made by two horizontal beams (about 8 feet long) and stubbier vertical beams about every 6 or 7 feet. On the opposite side of the fence, is our road.
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| hello Wanda |
Wanda’s diameter is like an average sized coffee table and it branches into a number of telephone pole sized mini-trunk branches. (with all of this size and shape talk, I’m scared im gonna give Wanda body issues). I promise that I tell you all of this for a reason.
About a week ago, while mmf and I were eating dinner and watching some television on the couch, we heard what sounded like 1.5 seconds of a noise I would describe as “crackling” and then a sound I would describe as “bad news.” The sound was accompanied by a physical vibration. There was an impact accompaniment. With the blinds closed, mmf and my first reaction was to look at each other. Like I said, the sound after the crackle, the “snap” or “pop” if you will, was definitely not a sign that our night was about to get better and more relaxing.
We run to the front door, we are on the porch.
First reaction? My car is safe!
Second reaction? Holy shit, the tree branch/mini-trunk just broke off, crashing through the wood fence like butter and completely stopping traffic from being able to pass in either direction. It was essentially a big branchy leafy telephone pole stretching from 4 feet onto our rental property to 4 feet into the ditch on the opposite side of the road. Not good.
We called the police. It’s one of those times when you just dial 911 and don’t even think of trying to figure out what the “local number” for the police is.
Third Reaction: How the hell did that branch not hit any power lines? Pure dumb luck folks. There is no other reason. There are plenty of lines to choose from, this tree missed them all. Thank goodness.
All and all, as huge potentially house or car crushing tree branch falls go, this was a pretty good one. Just one little problem of a blocked road in the darkness.
Minutes later, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men had come and lit up our avenue with blue and white flashers. Cones were put up and chain saws sawed. The speed with which the whole process took place made me wish these were the same people working on paving our roads. They were efficient and as quiet as one can be under the circumstances. An hour later the flashers were gone and the road was silent once more.
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| Grover examines the damage. That's his favorite pee spot that got destroyed. |
It all seemed to happen so fast. Boom. A branch falls in the night. Boom. You worry your car is crushed. Boom. Crisis averted. Light Camera Action. And scene. It all might have seemed like it had been a dream had . . . well . . .
Had the road crew not only removed the part of the branch that was physically laying across the road. The moment a millimeter of that branch was on grass (our grass), they stopped cutting. Which means that we still have a huge length of tree branch lying across our demolished wooden fence. Our yard kind of has the look of country bumpkins who drunkenly decided to build a cross in their from yard, got the wood, then passed out and forgot about it.
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| "hey man, its not on the road" |
You know, classy.
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