Thursday, July 8, 2010

Natural Air Conditioners Must Die!

"Used to always call them nature's air conditioners, he did, yep! Course that's not technically correct, but no mind, cause they sure do cool things off!"

"Uh, why are you shouting?"

"I'm hard of hearing!"

Thus went a short conversation on trees with old man Jones down by the Raspberry River near where the big bears gathered their provisions. Old man Jones himself would sometimes kill a bear and skin it to make himself a new bear coat for the winter, and he didn't care that the bear would not be coming out of the Big Hibernation he'd put it in. "I need that fur coat more than he did!" he would say/shout after the killing, which was usually done with his carving knife, the same one he used to make little bear carvings and wooden figurines. He liked to say that he created and destroyed bears with the same knife.-from Remembering Old Man Jones and other Raspberry River Tales

Well, I'm not gonna talk about bears right now, but on the topic of trees, a post by Green-Eyed Momster has inspired me to write a post on the same subject.

Forgetting the "neighbor from hell" issue for a moment, I wonder about lunatic tree-haters in general. I once lived on a beautiful street with big lawns and large trees. A few houses down from me lived an older man and his wife. Right in the middle of their lawn was a huge shade tree. It had been standing for decades in the same spot (you didn't think trees get up and walk around, did you?) and one day I come out to see it being cut down. The old man was standing nearby watching the destruction.

I walked up to him and asked what was going on.

"Cutting her down!"

"Why?", I wanted to know. "Is it diseased, posing a danger of falling over, rotten inside?"

"Oh, no. I'm just getting too old to maintain it and I hate raking leaves."

So, he basically had no good reason for destroying a perfectly good shade tree. His front yard looked like hell after the tree was removed, and then the old bastard was dead within two years anyway. Couldn't he have endured to save the life of a tree so it could be enjoyed by the next generation and the folks who would move into the house after he and his wife were gone? Maybe he was jealous of the tree's longevity and the fact that it would outlive him, so he decided to settled the score and prove to it who was boss?

More recently, a house on one of my walks was up for sale. Right in front it had a gigantic shade tree that cooled the whole property, including the house itself. I remarked to a walking companion that the house would sell only because of that fantastic tree.

Then one day, after the house had finally been sold, I was walking that way again and as I came around the corner I was confronted by a sight straight out of a Stephen King novel. The tree was gone! The yard and the house now looked like nothing at all, and the whole lawn had also been replaced by gravel! WTF?

Turns out two gay guys bought the place and had the tree chopped down.

I thought gays were liberals and all that? They had Greenpeace bumper stickers on their car, so what happened?


Here's a pro-tree link to calm you down: Benefits of Trees In Urban Areas



2 comments:

  1. Considering what I am suffering through during this heatwave, I heartily agree. The people who owned the house before me cut down a tree that sat directly in front of my bedroom window, because (get this) birds would sit in the tree first thing in the morning and "make too much noise.

    That's right, they killed a big, old tree because of birds chirping.

    Now, how does this relate to the heatwave? The sun shines directly on my bedroom from about 11:00 am until it sets, these days around 8:30. If the tree were still there, my bedroom would be nicely shielded from the sun, but instead, my bedroom is the temperature of the sun. I bought a thermometer just to see- it was 113 in my bedroom yesterday.

    Damn them!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Fuck trees. The storms in Philly caused millions in tree damages, and we spend another million every year cleaning up their litter (aka "leaves"). These heatwaves are great for getting rid of all these old people we have no use for anymore. These yuppies' brains are all fried, so they have no wisdom to pass on. They're just taking up jobs beyond retirement age and making longer lines at the pharmacy. I need penicillin now, you old coot, it burns when I pee!

    ReplyDelete

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