Friday, December 23, 2011

Doing violence to a mimosa


The other day I got out my chainsaw and cut down a thirty-foot tall mimosa tree in my backyard.  I cut the branches up in ten-foot lengths, small enough to drag around to the front yard, and called one of those grinder folks.  Actually they’re landscape folks who also have grinders.
I cut the thick trunk and larger branches into short enough pieces to wheelbarrow around to the front, figuring to pawn them off on my neighbors as firewood.
When the grinder guys were through ramming the branches into one of the loudest, most violent machines I’ve ever heard, the head guy asked me if I wanted the trunk disposed of too.
Figuring it would save me having to con one of my neighbors I said yes.
I expected him to charge me a little extra, load them on the back of his trick and haul them off.
Instead he picked up a foot thick, foot and a half long chunk of the trunk and tossed it into the grinder.  The grinder barked like a cannon and spit the chips into the catch-bed like they were machine gun bullets.  One loud, violent blast.  Gone in about one second.  Then he and his guys chucked the rest of the chunks of the trunk in, in rapid succession, BBDDDTTT, BBDDDTTT, BBDDDTTT, until an entire tree had been violently devoured.
Scary loud.  They’re all gonna be deaf by next year. 

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