Friday, August 20, 2010

How to Make Friends With the Neighbors

It rained big time yesterday. About eight-tenths of an inch in 15 minutes. Not at all typical for Utah. It was windy too. One of the big quakies couldn't stand all the excitement and dropped over -- right on the next door neighbor's house.

She's a lovely, seventy something widow. I really did not want to drop a tree on her house. She didn't answer her phone, and when I called her workplace she'd just left. Darn!

So I called my tree guy, who, because Murphy rules, had just been out the day before working on the trees.

"Rick! Tree emergency! One of my big quakies just fell on my neighbor's garage."

He was right in the middle of cutting a tree off of a poor squashed car, but when he was done, he sent his guys on over with the cherry picker.

Then my neighbor called me and said she'd gotten home a little bit ago. Her garage door was only partially blocked, so she'd driven on in and parked. She hadn't called until her work had called her cell phone and let her know I was looking for her because, "I wasn't worried, I knew you'd take care of it." She's a good (and trusting) neighbor.

While the guys were waiting for Rick, who had the chainsaws in his truck, they roped up the tree so it wouldn't do any damage while it was coming down and cut off as many branches as their loppers could handle.

They waited...

Patiently.





Then Macho Time!




I don't think this technique would be approved in chainsaw safety class.










Don't chainsaws bring out the testosterone in a guy?

Fortunately, the tree had toppled over slowly and there was no damage whatsoever to the neighbor's house.

The same can't be said for my tree. Here's all that's left of it.

1 comment:

KC said...

Wow, that was scary. Glad no one was hurt including the men wielding the chainsaws. We missed you at the MG meeting and yesterday!