Let the Chips Fall Where They May
Arthur eyed the large oak tree in the back yard. It had been hit by lightning a few years ago and the core was decaying. Elizabeth had directed him to call the local tree service to get it removed since Bud, the owner, was a high school friend of hers. But Arthur had decided to take it down himself. He had a chainsaw, and since he would be the one splitting the wood it had been a good excuse to buy some wedges he'd been coveting. If his calculations were correct, the tree would clear the house by several yards. It would also fall fairly close to the firewood storage racks, thus saving him many steps hauling the cut and split wood. It was the perfect win/win situation.
What had been a intact ball of twine.
Buster and Annie were in the back yard as well, inspecting the contents of the garden shed, the door of which had been inadvertently left ajar. As space inside it was limited, Buster was busily removing as many items as possible so the two of them could decide which ones might be edible. The immediate area was strewn with several empty plastic pots, a foam kneeling pad, an old rake handle, and what had until a few minutes ago been an intact ball of twine. The twine was hastily dropped when Buster eyed Annie heading toward the shed to satisfy her own curiosity. Retrieving a pair of work gloves he'd been meaning to purloin next, Buster settled down on the grass in the shade and began to chew. Ralph shimmered up to him with a caution, “Those are Arthur's gloves so you'll be OK. If those were Elizabeth's, you'd be in the dog house.”
“I know,” Buster replied. “But if they were Elizabeth's they wouldn't taste or smell nearly as nice, and I would leave them alone. As Plato once said, 'A good decision is based on knowledge,' and I agree.”
“So true, you little whippersnapper,” Ralph thought with pride, and decided to let that issue drop. But a more pressing issue was currently on his mind.
As Ralph so intimately knew, Arthur and chainsaws could be a dangerous combination. There was the time when Arthur had tripped while operating the saw and had cut a small gorge in the back yard. There was also the time when he was cutting off the limb of a tree and the rebound had almost felled the ladder he was standing on, and the time…, no, he didn't want to think about it. He herded Buster and Annie over well behind the targeted tree and began to school them on the perils of Arthur with a saw.
Arthur was unaware of Ralph's presence or the mess that had been created around the garden shed. He wanted to get busy with the tree removal as soon as possible and was focused on what to do first. He'd been relieved earlier in the morning to hear Elizabeth say she was spending the day with a friend, so this was the perfect opportunity for him to take down the tree without harassment from a well-meaning wife. It had been all he could do to keep from whistling her out the door.
As he lay the new wedges nearby and oiled his chainsaw, Arthur thought that perhaps another check of the path the tree would take when it fell was in order. Measure twice, cut once he knew was the adage to follow. But further calculations only encouraged his inner self to say, “Stand back, watch a pro.” Ralph, Buster, and Annie settled in to watch, and Ralph remained alert to any possible mishaps.
Gazing up at the tree, Arthur had to admit that it really was an eyesore. Not only did it have little foliage, but it had been pruned a few years back by the utility company in an effort to keep it from touching power lines, and they had pruned with a vengeance. The lines had recently been buried but the tree retained the voids made by this drastic trimming. From some angles one could get a clear view of the sky on the right hand side. It really was time to assist nature and take it down, and for once he had to admit that Elizabeth was right.
Glancing around for Annie and Buster, he noticed them sitting well behind the tree he was removing, uncharacteristically quiet. “Good dogs!” he praised them and instructed them to stay put, looking a bit smug at how well he had trained them. Ralph rolled his eyes.
It was time to get to work. Arthur yanked his chainsaw to life and began to make a notch in the trunk of the damaged tree. The machine ran with perfection and Arthur's confidence soared. The first cut executed artfully, he now made the second cut that would form the wedge. Once this wedge was removed, he'd slice through the remaining portion of the trunk slowly, giving him plenty of time to listen for the tree to move, then he would step back and watch the descent.
He stood behind the notched tree one last time to eyeball the path it would take. It still looked perfect, the trunk sighted halfway between the house and his stacked wood.
Arthur revved the chainsaw to life again and began to make the final cut. But he had barely nicked the trunk when an audible crack was heard. Surprised at how little extra cutting had needed to be done, he quickly put down his chainsaw, checked that the dogs were still out of the way, and stepped back to watch at a safe distance.
The tree began to quiver and then fell on its trajectory. Its path was partly determined by Arthur's skillful use of a chainsaw. It was also determined by the damage done by the utility company. Arthur had neglected to take into account that the downward path was influenced by the weight of the top of the tree. Being heavy on the left hand side, it tilted toward the left, and its path proceeded in that manner. Suddenly those coveted wedges were beginning to look a lot more costly.
This is actually derecho damage. The reader is requested to imagine that it is Arthur damage
Luckily the house was to the right, the stacked wood to the left of the on-coming tree, which landed with a crash far from the house but unfortunately not far away from the wood pile. The tree bisected the stacks and catapulted the contents from their original place of repose. What had once been a neat array of firewood now looked like a young Paul Bunyan had razed a structure he’d made with his toy logs.
Arthur glanced back to check on Buster and Annie and was relieved to note that they were still sitting in position, although their ears were now markedly elevated and their eyebrows arched into their foreheads. Unseen was a calm Ralph talking to them in hushed tones, “Well there, I rest my case. We'll assume that missing the house makes this a positive outcome, though. The wood pile can always be re-stacked. 'All's well that ends well', as a Shakespeare title would say.”
Buster eyed him quizzically. “I was thinking more of paraphrasing Stan Laurel,” he replied. “Another fine mess you've gotten into.” And Ralph had to agree there was some truth to that sentiment as well.
Arthur went over to check the damage. The house was indeed safe but the woodpile was a disaster. The trunk of the tree was resting across the remains of the stacks, and the top branches fanned out across the yard. It would take a lot of chain sawing to set things to rights. Because it was already noon, the rest of his day had suddenly become more complicated and lunch was out of the question.
Neat supply of previously stacked wood. I’m sorry about not many woozle pictures, but the woozles are not allowed in the wood lot as it is too near the highway.
Resigned, Arthur began lopping off the small top branches that were easy to reach; this would give him more access to the main trunk. He worked steadily, and as long as his eyes didn't take in the once neat supply of previously stacked wood, he was happy to fall into the rhythm of cut and remove. At first Buster and Annie resumed their investigations of the shed under Ralph's watchful eye, but when the chainsaw was revved up for the third time they decided they'd had enough of the noise and barked to be let indoors.
Around five-thirty Elizabeth returned home to find an exhausted Arthur still dragging tops away from the trunk. “What in the world!” she exclaimed. “Bud dropped it on your stack of wood? And why isn't he here now making things right? I don't care if five o'clock is quitting time!”
Arthur saw an opening and he took it. “It's OK,” he tried to appease her. “Even pros can make a mistake, so I'm not going to blame Bud. And I'm going to save us some money by cleaning things up myself. Bud won't be sending us a bill.”
“I should hope not!” she retorted, and Arthur was relieved to see her turn and walk into the house. He didn't relish the idea of telling another white lie, and he felt bad enough having already besmirched Bud's reputation. Eventually, he'd have to come clean to Elizabeth and admit that he'd been the one to take the tree down, but that confession would wait a day or two. He would tackle that when the tree was all cut up and the wood neatly stacked, when the yard was back to normal, and when it was obvious that he had been able to handle everything after all. He glanced at the felled tree, sighed, and went in for dinner.
Seeing that the cutting session was over for the day, Ralph got up to leave. He felt sorry for Arthur and the work ahead of him, but he was glad that things had ended with everyone safe and sound. And while he knew it wasn't the tree's fault, he just had to express his feelings. Passing the prone trunk, he lifted a hind leg in a parting salute.
