Tim-ber!

[adan]

Hi Cubby! Thanks for your story. I thought things like that don't happen in the USA. I have this impression sometimes that rules are rules in that part of the globe But the way you have described it is the way it goes oftentimes in my part of the globe, sometimes to a fault.

The moral of the story is, just be a person of good cheer and that usually resonates.

 

[JDgreen]

WOW jd you're way too serious! I guess you didn't see the kidding part? Let me be perfectly clear I'm not saying to bribe anyone or to get away with anything just a little humor thats all.

So let me tell you about that day 25 yrs ago, My wife and I bought are 1st house and it was heavly
wooded all the way up to a few feet from the house. The house was really damp because of all the
shade. One of the guys I work with had this huge chain saw and was dying to show it off. He offers
to come over and knock a few of them down for me. I got a few more friends together and made a
day of it. Well after cutting down around 27 trees without any problems we came to the last tree.
It was an oak about 90ft tall we figured. The only place to fell the tree was towards the driveway.
There was a power line running through my property to a neighbors property, but at the very edge
of this driveway. We measured from the tree to the line and had just over 100ft. We all felt comfortable this would work. So you know what happens next, as it fell the very last branches and only the leaves just brushed the wires and they came down like they weren't connected! Lucky nobody got hurt and no real damage. My wife called the power co. and told them I cut a tree down on top of the wire and knocked it down. Two hours later two power and light trucks show up and crew of guys.
After a few good minutes of laughter only because of all the trees we cut down and it was the last one
that did me in these really great guys put the lines back up in about 15 mins. if that. When they finished they had to come over for one more laugh and told me the lines weren't even hot because
the property next to mine was off. Just before they left they told me next time just say a tree fell on the line and we'll take care of the rest. I'm sure they laughed all the way back to their shop. These guys were really nice and would not accept anything I offered, but I was able to sneak a couple of cases of beer in their trucks anyway!

Now the next month when our light bill came we were real nervous to open it but were really surprised to see not a word or charge was mentioned, we are very grateful. Well thats it and I hope you didn't take it the wrong way , take care.......cubby

Thanks for sharing your story...apologize for sounding doubtful but if it really did happen that way I am glad for you and even gladder there wasn't a charge...it's pretty easy to misjudge the heigt of a tree, I have used both the sunshine-and-shadow method and using a marker stick to calculate the height...usually got within a few feet that way. I wonder if those optical distance finders used by hunters and golfers would be really accurate to measure tree height? Wow 27 trees? Seems like a shame to cut down a beautiful old oak, most of the trees here I have removed were either box elder or cedar, not worth much but they were storm damaged otherwise I would have let them stand. If I had something like an oak or maple I would do everything I could to keep it standing. Almost lost our best tree in the front yard 20 years ago, it's a huge black walnut, beautifully shaped, it got hit by a big lightning strike early one evening and the charge blew bark off it 35 feet away. We called the local agricultural college and they told us the best way to make sure it lived was to just flood the roots with water as often the charge boiled the moisture out of a tree, we followed their advice and it lived.

 

[Two-Stroke]

I had a tree struck by lightning in May, 2009. I wasn't around at the time but my neighbors (about 1/3 mile away with lots of trees and hills in between) said it was so loud that it startled them out of a deep sleep.

It was an oak which provided a lot of firewood for the winter of 2009-2010.

I've always been very careful about the possibility of hitting anything of value when I cut down a tree. I'm in the process of thinning out lots of very dense forest so I've cut down hundreds of trees (mostly small ones) in the last couple years. The idea is to allow the remaining trees to thrive.

 

[JDgreen]

I had a tree struck by lightning in May, 2009. I wasn't around at the time but my neighbors (about 1/3 mile away with lots of trees and hills in between) said it was so loud that it startled them out of a deep sleep.

It was an oak which provided a lot of firewood for the winter of 2009-2010.

I've always been very careful about the possibility of hitting anything of value when I cut down a tree. I'm in the process of thinning out lots of very dense forest so I've cut down hundreds of trees (mostly small ones) in the last couple years. The idea is to allow the remaining trees to thrive.

I was out mowing the back yard on my smaller John Deere when the storm began that night, it was almost dark, when the rain began I parked the tractor in the north barn and ran thru the back yard into the house, could see lots of lightning flashes nearby so ran into the living room to tell my wife to get off the phone, the tree was maybe thirty yes THIRTY FEET from the inside of the living room, it felt like a bomb going off inside....and we had a hardwood floor !!!! If the strike had happened a minute earlier I would have seen it hit the tree while I was running through the back yard...odds are my wife would have been sure it hit me on my tractor.

Every since that incident, if I see any lightning out side, no matter how far away, I get my tractor indoors as fast as I can and skedaddle for the house. Stay on it when I see lightning? NEVER AGAIN.

 

[CurbAppeal]

If they are very large I would have someone else do it unless you are experienced in the field. They can be very large trees which you will have to cut up after etc. If you do it yourself plan a lot of time for it and make sure you know what you're doing.
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