B&K Save the Day

Thursday's little adventure had all of the elements to be a really good, possibly prize-winning, stupidest home video (that is, if we had been videotaping.) Ben and I decided to do some yard work that morning (mowing, weeding plants, watering, etc.) As we were finishing with those tasks and it was coming up on lunchtime, we were noticing a few more limbs were down around the big oak tree in our front yard. There are so many dead limbs from an ice storm way before we even moved here that are trapped on top of some other limbs. So we decided we could handle cutting and sawing off several of them if we backed the truck up under the tree and stood either on top of the cab or on top of the step stool inside the bed of the truck. Has everyone pictured this yet?

Ben was the primary ax man with his little hatchet and our piddly little hand saw, freakishly strong hands, and protective goggles. (Fine tools for cutting down several thick oak limbs, don't you think?) I was the helper and only got to have protective goggles. My main job was holding onto the end of the limb Ben was cutting and simultaneously lifting it up and pulling it down and to the side to the ground as Ben sawed through it (trying not to smash it on top of Ben or the truck.)

We were very, very careful and we drank plenty of water to stay hydrated, and ended up with a nice pile of smoking wood for another brisket. I told Ben it felt like the beginnings of a home video where someone was about to come inches from certain death, but we both made it through the experience with only a few scratches (and it's really a miracle that only one of those scratches on Ben's forehead came from the saw...I couldn't help that he raised up as I was lowering it! Oops!) And I'm happy to report neither of us fell off of anything and the truck is no worse for wear either.

The tree is really two trees that grew up so close together that they now share one base trunk and the limb that goes out to the right is really one of the massive trunks. It's really bizarre...and it was starting to lose a few limbs sue to rotting from the inside out, so we are happy to have helped put them out of their misery.