Tree Removal Project Heats Up
The sky was clear, a gentle breeze off the lake - a perfect day to watch the tree removal!
Yeti, Taco and our many, many friends-
Last week we got up extra early, promptly ate our breakfast, and got the best seats for the tree removal show (front row center, thanks to our connections with the owner). We couldn’t wait for the show to start!
The tree service showed up promptly before 8. They brought in this ginormous truck with a funny looking thing on the top, At first, we could just hear a lot of chain sawing. They must have been cutting the trees into smaller pieces. Then we saw the truck swing its huge claw, grab a pile of branches and then dump them in the truck. Every now and then the claw would smash the branches down to make room for more. We want to stay on that truck’s good side for sure!
Just before lunch, the humans disappeared and the sawing stopped. We flew overhead & listened in- we didn’t want to miss any of the action. Turns out, they went into the woods to figure out how to cut down and cut up the rest of the damaged trees. They wanted to be sure each tree fell into the woods and not on a house. Probably a good idea…
A little while later, we saw one of the guys climbing a tree. Wol used his amazing eyesight to find out how he could stay stuck to the tree. After all, humans are not squirrels. Apparently, they have special equipment: shoe spikes, a special harness, leather chaps, and a huge saw hanging from a clip. We’re still not sure how they climbed up without getting hit by the swinging saw! This was definitely the neatest thing we saw all day!
When crew went to lunch, we just had to go check things out first hand. One word: AMAZING! We couldn’t believe how big the truck was close up. Also, where did the tops of these trees go? We could see the branches with leaves and the trunks, but the middles went missing.
We wanted to make friends with the truck (and also check it out up close. Thanks for the idea, Yeti!) Unfortunately, Scottie couldn’t figure out the lock. All we got was a look- there were some extra levers and a big steering wheel. Thankfully, Wol the Owl has good hearing and heard them coming back from lunch so we high tailed it out of there before he found us!
After lunch, we saw Mike (he is the owner of the company) use a stick to mark the trunks before cutting them into smaller pieces. We found out that the stick is 8’ long so they can cut the logs in 8’ and 16’ sections. The sawmill then cuts these into lumber for building houses. After they measured the trees and cut them down, they started loading the two big piles of logs. We couldn’t believe they all fit into the truck! We asked how much the logs weighed. He said probably 25 - 30 tons (or more). Wow, that sawmill is going to be really happy!
