Took another tree down this week, this time a rottenwood pine that died over the course of the past winter and was endangering the nearby power and telephone lines. Getting the required permit was no problem - the tree was obviously dead - and I only had to interview two contractors before I found the right crew at the right price to take it down.
The climbers who do the aerial work on these jobs have got to be among the bravest workers at a most hazardous job. The dead pine was too rotten to climb, so my climber had to hoist himself up an adjacent tree and somehow reach out and cut the deadwood of the "nearby" tree.
To give you an idea of how high up he was, look closely at the very top of the picture above. That's him way up there in the orange shirt.
And then look closely at what he's doing up there - standing on only the thinnest of branches from the nearby tree, he's leaning out at an almost 90 degree angle to saw off a ten-foot section of the dead tree. Dangling from a rope some 50 feet above the ground and working with a chainsaw while hundreds of pounds of dead timber crash down around you - what could possibly go wrong?
For those of you who care, there are still plenty of trees left on my property. This is the third I've had taken down in the past 24 months, but the canopy still appears intact. The squirrels, songbirds and beetles have not lost any habitat, and my house and the neighborhood utility lines are a wee bit safer.
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