ABCs of Tree Trimming
The poor pine towers topless above my yard, it’s streetside face denuded of branches, nothing but open, sap-weeps sores where once proud limbs extended.
Dominion Virginia Power contractors have been sent through the city trimming trees off of power lines again.
This time, the contractor — Arbor Butchering Criminals, I think is the name — went all Texas Chainsaw on my pine, lopping limbs off that were no where near the power lines and even attacking the oak tree that stands in the middle of my yard.
It’s a disaster. I’m not sure who trained the saw-wielding weasels on the fine art of tree trimming, but if they’re more akin to tree quacks than surgeons. There should be some malpractice insurance I can collect on. I’m sure it meets “contemporary industry standards” just like all new housing must meet code, but standards and codes are mininums, which apparently is exactly what these people did. They took the minimum care needed to provide the maximum protection for the utility and did the maximum damage to the tree.
Hey, in case ABC thinks I’m being unjust, my tree stands in my yard for truth as a defense. Come out and look for yourself. My neighbors did.
“Boy, they really butchered that,” said a kind neighbor, standing in shock and awe like an Iraqi military commander at the start of the Iraq War. “Man, they really butchered that.”
And if that wasn’t enough:
“Good God, man, why didn’t they just cut the whole thing down and get it over with,” asked another neighbor, standing in the middle of the street. “I thought they mangled mine.”
To me the cutting makes no sense, rhyme or reason. I’m not a trained-tree trimmer, and I doubt they are, either, so I can’t talk professionally. However, similar, if less drastic, assaults were carried on throughout the neighborhood in apparent random cut-tings. Some trees still tower over the power lines. Some, way away from the lines, have been cut.
No one, of course, is happy. No one likes to come home and find a pile of woodchips in the front yard, bits and pieces of tree limb scattered about the driveway and their once round pine tree bare on one side and limbed on the other so that it looks like a green birthday candle with melted wax on one side. I’m not sure that the tree is going to survive this assault. If they thought it was such a danger to the power lines, they could have asked and I would have let them take it down rather than ravage it like bipedal termites with gas-powered teeth.
If it does die, and I don’t see how it can live through the year, I hope the hell it falls on the freakin’ power line and blows a few transformers.
They can call the Arbor Butchering Criminals back out to remove its poor dead carcass from across the wires.
Posted by Bryan McKenzie at 07:05 AM. Filed under: Daily Screed •
