Timber!

Our home, aka the zoo, sits on just under 1/2 acre in the downtown area of our small city. (Isn't it amazing what you can do with small spaces? And have I mentioned that we are still waiting for the IRS to stop sitting on their hands about the 501(c)3 status, so I can have my home back?  Yes?  Then never mind...)  When we first bought the house, after renting it for five years, half that half acre was covered in weed trees.  Well, maybe a quarter, I was never good at fractions and spatial geometry, but...there were a shitton of trees taking up a lot of the back yard.  A couple three Eastern Hemlocks (and very ugly ones at that) and the rest weed Maples...not the kind good for syrup, either.

The zookeeper and I went back and forth and back and forth over whether or not to leave them or have them taken down, with my final argument being two fold.

Me:  "We could use the space.  And they are butt-ugly."

Apparently the zookeeper honed in on the "butt-ugly" argument (because somehow over the years he has come to understand that if my environment is visually unappealing I will bitch, piss, and moan until one or both of us remedy the situation.  And me bitchpissingandmoaning eventually gets to be like splinters under the fingernails...) and decided to do something about the but-ugliest of the half dead Hemlocks.  I'm not sure exactly how it happened, or what precipitated the decision to finally remove the tree (If thine right eye offends thee?) because I was at work when the whole thing went down--literally.  So all I have is a second hand hearesay story from my neighbor who to this day laughs about it, and the memory of a phone call that went something like this.

Me, answering the phone at work:  "Thank you for calling (insert place of buisness here) this is Me.

Him:  "Do you want the good news or the bad news?'

So right away I'm thinking, who does this?  Why do people ask this question?  Who wants the bad news, really?  Oooh, me, tell me something that will totally ruin my day, because I love hearing shit like that.  Do I want the bad news?  Hell no.  In a perfect world there just wouldn't ever be any bad news, especially when I'm at work and can't leave and so can't do a damn thing about it.  Wouldn't it be better just to come out with it already?  What's the point of dragging it out?  Do you have any idea how many "bad news" things a mother can think of in the space of two seconds?  It's like a form of torture.  Kids running in the street after a ball and getting hit by a car, someone in the ER with a broken bone from a fall, house burned down...death, dismemberment, we didn't win the Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes...of course I wanted the bad news first.  At least this stupid question leaves the hope that something less bad happened?

Me:  "Give me the good news first."  I like being different.

Him:  "The barn is still standing."

Me:  "What do you mean, the barn is still standing?  The house isn't?  Are we going to need to live in the barn now?

I'm seriously starting to freak the hell out now get worried, because this was not long after the zookeeper almost burned the fricking house down with a chiminey fire we learned the hard way just how hot and fast 125 year old lathing could burn when a handful is tossed into the woodstove...

Him:  "No, no, nothing like that.  I took out the dead pine tree, and...it didn't fall the way I expected.  So, the swingset is now in splinters."

Me:  "The $700 swing set that Sunshine plays on everyday?  The one I don't think we can afford to replace?"

Him:  "Yeah, that one.  She's pretty upset."

Me:  "Ok, well as long as nobody go hurt..."

Which wasn't entirely true, as I can still see my five year old Sunshine's tearfull eyes and hear her sob "This is the worstest day of my life..."  Well, up till then I suppose it was.  I, being not the best candidate for mother of the year, kept thinking that there will be worse, little one...

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A couple of years after the death of the swing set, we made the decision to remove most of the trees (we'll leave out the high-level discussions about which trees were kept) and hired a tree service to come take them down.  By mutual and unspoken agreement the job was left to the pros. They have insurance for tree removal.  No chance of living in the barn...  We carefully marked each tree (and yes, the song "Tie a Yellow Ribbon" was playing through my mind the whole time we wrapped caution tape around the ones we chose to keep) that was to be saved, and 30 or so fewer 20+ year old weed Maples disposed of later had a backyard twice the size it was before, and with tons more sunlight.  Yay!  Plenty of room for people and outdoor animal enclosures.

The first to get a new space was the wallaby (there was only one back then) followed by the tortoises.  Yes, this was the summer of the amorous Walter adventures.  The pool was up, the badminton net was up, and Walter was able to get down to business in full UV exposure.

It was a dark and stormy night Big thunder storms rolled in one afternoon, the kind where the wind whips the trees into a frenzy and the thunder hangs in the air like it has mass, the lightening has an eerie glow...and if you grew up anywhere that has tornadoes as an every summer occurance you check the skies for that sickly greenish tint every few minutes because those memories don't ever go away...The lighening split the sky like it was trying to tear a hole in the fabric of the universe, and even storm loving jaded me jumped away from the window when a tree bent all the way down to sweep the glass.  Loud boom of thunder, huge gust of wind, and the cracking sound of trees going down.

Ever hear of a microburst? It's like a tornado, only one directional.  I hadn't heard of them, but after the rain tapered off and the storm moved away, I wandered outside to take a peek.  Holy shit, five of the trees we chose to leave up are missing their tops!  I grabbed my cell and called the zookeeper, who was (of course) off working.  Slid on my sandals and started exploring the back yard even as I talked to him.

Me:  "Ohmygod, we lost five trees right now!  When can you get home?  Is the wallaby in his house?"

Him:  "Wait, what?  I have the wallaby with me.  What happened?  Are the tortoises ok?"

Me:  "What tortoises?  Where?  Why is there water up to my ankles in the back yard?"

Him:  "The tortoises are in their pen in on the other side of the barn.  Can you go check?"

Yeah, if I get a canoe...I was so distracted by the sight of five or six trees with their tops shorn off at the same level that I couldn't figure out why I had little wavelets of water lapping at my shins.  None of the trees hit anything, the power was still on, no water leaks, so why did my back yard look like the Everglades all of a sudden?

Me, rounding the barn to the rest of the yard:  "On my way there.  Where is all this water coming from?  Holy Fuck!  A tree took out <the neighbor's> pool.  It's wasted.  And all the water is in our yard...oh, wow, the tortoises are under water.  Can they swim?"

Duh.  They weigh a ton and are sub-saharan animals....

Here in New England, we mostly have above ground swimming pools.  Why?  Because a) we are cheap frugal and they cost less to install, and b) they are considered temporary/removable, so don't impact property taxes...which leads back to reason a.  Our little "not a tornado" took out trees in the next door neighbor's yard as well, and one of them crushed the side of their pool...sending about 15,000 gallons of water rushing into our yard, and completely engulfing the temporary tortoise pen.  Which is not cool if you're a 50lb turtle acclimated to a very arid environment.  One minute you're munching away on dandelion greens and kale, and the next minute you're wondering why evolution didn't at least give you the ability to tread water.  Or gills.  Or something.

Managed to get the tortoises to higer ground, and eventually the water went away.  The neighbors got a new pool, and we had the tree guys back out for five or so more trees.  S'okay, we still had a few left, but it was hard losing the oak that had to be at least 100 years old.  Every cloud has a silver lining?  We had pleanty of seasoned wood to burn in the woodstove that year.  What can I say?  It's New England, after all.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

August 28, 2011.  Everyone remember this day?  No?  Maybe this will spark a memory.

I was worried about friends more central to the action, since we pretty much knew Come-On-Irene would have blown herself mostly out by the time she got to our neck of the woods.  Although it's always funny to watch insane people make a run on the grocery store for milk and bread, because of course we need to stock up on the perishables when we think we're going to lose power.  Cuz you never know when you're gonna want a milk sandwich when the 'lectricity goes.  I even got to go to work to help board up the store front (please.  We used cardboard and duct tape and wanted to make smiley faces with it...15 minutes and done.  Hurricane?  What hurricane?)

All morning we listened to the wind blow, even though she was a tropical storm by the time she reached us, thinking, nah, nothing to worry about.  Until this happened.

Yup, that's my backyard, and the replacement swing set, which is actually still standing.  Can't say the same for the fence, and that tree just brushed the roof of my neighbor's house.  So, three events taking out trees, and do you think one of them could have landed on my kitchen?  Of course not, because the universe just doesn't work that way.  My new kitchen had to wait (not much longer though.)  Apparently Mother Nature felt we didn't take down enough trees in the first go, and has been knocking them down a few at a time ever since.  The moral of the story?  When you wish for a bigger backyard, be very careful.  Sometimes getting what we wish for comes with a price tag...like the cost of a new vinyl fence.