Thursday, December 28, 2006, 02:55

Chop-Chop-Chop

When I heard what sounded like a piece of heavy equipment coming up the road first thing Tuesday morning, I figured it was something out of the ordinary.

When the tree-trimming truck, pulling a chipper behind it, pulled in the driveway, I *knew* something was up.

I went outside to speak to the man who got out of the truck.

"We're from the power company, and we're here to cut down some trees," the man said.

"Cut down some trees?" I said.

My heart sank. When I see trees being cut down, it causes me physical pain. I don't like to see trees cut. For one thing, trees help reduce global warming. For another thing, it takes so long to grow a tree, when a tree is cut down, I know I will never see another one like for the rest of my lifetime.

"We heard you had some problems the other night during the ice storm," the man said.

I pointed to the jack pine that had been touching the wires.

"We'd like to cut that one, and -- " the man turned and looked around the yard, "and that one, and that one and that one and that one," he said, indicating trees along the side of the yard.

"Cut them down?" I said.

The man looked at me.

"Could we come to a compromise?" I said. "What if you cut the ones in front and leave the ones behind them?"

The man looked at the trees.

"We'll see what we can do," he said.

Since Randy had to leave for work in a few minutes, and since the tree-trimming truck and the chipper blocked the driveway, the man and his partner backed out onto the road and took a coffee break until Randy left for work. Then they pulled back in the driveway -- and the slaughter began.

I didn't want to let Charlie out while they were working because I didn't want him to get in the way. And I figured it was no use to try to feed the horses because what with the horrendous noise from the chipper, the horses would be too nervous to eat anyway.

For the next two hours, I stayed in the house and listened to the roar of the chainsaw and the grinding of the chipper. It was so loud that I had trouble even thinking inside the house. Poor little Sophie was so frightened by all of the noise that she wanted to get into the linen closet in the hallway. She wanted to get into the linen closet very badly. So I opened the door and let her in the linen closet. She disappeared into the dark depths of the closet in the blink of an eye.

At one point, the two-man crew moved the truck out of the upper driveway and drove around to the lower driveway. The powerline runs along the east side of the yard, and there are trees growing between the road and the house. I like to have the trees there because they provide a screen between the house and the road.

Finally, after two hours, the truck backed out of the driveway and headed down the road.

I really didn't want to go outside to see how bad the carnage was, but I knew I would have to go outside sooner or later.

I walked out on the back porch and looked toward the east side yard. I was expecting that a good half a dozen trees would be gone.

Instead -- I saw that they had cut down only two trees. One fairly good-sized pine tree by the bird feeder. And a birch tree behind the daylily bed.

They had only trimmed up the other trees. They took the top out of one big jack pine, but that particular tree had been topped before. They cut off the branches on the side of the large jack pine that had been touching the electrical wire. And they took the top out of another fairly large pine tree toward the lower driveway. Plus they trimmed branches off a number of other trees.

All things considered -- I was pleasantly surprised. The powerline is free of branches. And we only lost two trees.

To tell you the truth, I don't feel too bad about the birch tree. With the birch out of there, it leaves room for the lilac I planted beneath it to grow and fill out. And I know the lilac will never get tall enough to reach the electrical wires.

I was so pleased by the job the tree service had done (they only cut down two trees!) that I called the power company. Although the man said they were from the power company, they weren't really from the power company. The power company contracts with the tree-trimming service to cut and trim trees where necessary.

When I was finally put through to the general manager at the power company, he was very cautious when I told him who I was and that I was calling about their tree-trimming service.

He warmed up considerably when I told him the tree service had done an excellent job and that I wanted to tell him that they had done an excellent job.

"Well," he said. "This is a surprise. People only call to complain about the tree service."

I explained that they had only cut two trees and had trimmed up the rest, that they had not left a mess, and that all together, they had done a wonderful job.

I also told him that it was in such stark contrast to the job the township had done along the road that I felt compelled to call and tell the power company that their tree service was worth the money they are paying for it.

The general manager wondered if I lived south of town.

"The township cut trees there, and well. . .I can't think of a good word to describe it. . . . but, well. . .they butchered those trees," he said. "It's an awful mess."

I told him I lived in another township but the trees were butchered in our township, too, and that yes, we had an awful mess along the road.

You see, after the township cut down all of my beautiful oak trees, the patrolman went around the corner and cut down a bunch more trees along the road by the wooded hill. He cut down maybe 20 trees all together, some of which had been there since I was a kid. The stumps are five feet high. And the brush is all lying in the ditch or in the neighbor's cow pasture. It makes me physically ill to drive around that way. Those trees were not hurting a thing. We get about four cars a day past there on the road, and it wasn't like the trees were impeding traffic or getting in the way for plowing snow. The trees he cut down were more than 50 years old, I'm sure, because they were there when I was a kid. And I will never again in my lifetime see trees like that growing by the road. I'd have to live to be 120 to see trees there again. My only consolation is that maybe the brush piles will encourage blackberries to grow. That's IF we ever get enough rain in the summer to produce blackberries on the brambles.

It's kind of a funny thing, though, isn't it. Two tree cutting jobs. But one was done the right way -- and the other was done the wrong way.

Thanks to an excellent tree-trimming service, I now know that it is possible to trim trees -- and to trim a lot off those trees, but to do it in such a way that it hardly makes a difference to the overall landscape.

The way I see it, the townships could learn a lesson from the job done by a professional tree-trimming service.

Snowflake -- My little Snowflake celebrated her nine week birthday on Tuesday. She loves to play with whatever she can find to play with -- shoelaces, socks, paper, boots, the big kitties. She is an athletic kitten and turns somersaults and hops and skips and jumps around the house as she plays. All together, she strikes me as being a happy kitten. The other night when Randy fell asleep on the couch, she crawled up there and fell asleep curled up on his legs. I call her my Christmas Miracle. She was barely breathing when I brought her in the house on October 28. And now she's playing with everything she can get her paws on!

LeAnn R. Ralph