Ents, The Two Towers and the Assault on the Double Wide

Ents are treelike beings created by JRR Tolkien in the Two Towers, the second part of his epic trilogy. I always tend to gravitate to the large and slow characters: Beorn, the Bear and Treebeard the Ent are amongst my favorite Tolkien characters.

I did find the Ents to be very dangerous and deceptive in the movie version...far from the picture Tolkien painted in his book. None the less Treebeard was wonderful.

This has nothing directly to do with this post...it's just I have just finished watching the 2002 release of The Two Towers. It is not good to become hasty in replacing the images one's min conjures  at the reading of a  a story. I was fairly pleased with the Peter Jackson's cinematic presentation, thanks mainly to the incredible scenery New Zealand afforded.

Onward...

We added an addition to the our mighty fine double wide a few years ago. In the process of siteing I failed to take into account that trees tend to grow bigger as the years pass. My wife mentioned that the "two towers" would come back to haunt us if I didn't cut 'em down before the structure went up. Deep in my heart I knew she was right, but opted to "wait and see". Not a great plan.

There WAS a huge, messy, rotten limb-dropping Water Oak that had dropped a 4" limb on the cab of the pickup, as if it needed another dent. The other was a Sweetgum that rivaled the Two Towers and seemed to be going for a Tower of Babel record. It was pushing 90 feet at least. Both were three to five feet from the addition. They had to go.

I had gotten a couple estimates from people to remove them. All ridiculously high. The Oak continued to drop limbs...as is their habit. The Sweetgum kept climbing for the sky.

Enter the Man with the Bucket Truck.

Bobby had worked with Georgia Power for 28 years, and had been in the tree business for 42. Not, as he put it, what he ever intended to be doing for that many years. He and Talmadge were doing some fiberglass work on the bucket truck and I was filling up Talmadge's swimming pool with dirt. I had watched Bobby trim many of the trees on Talmadge's place and it dawned on me to ask Bobby if he would like to price the removal of the Two Towers. He and I rode down to the Two Towers and struck a deal I could live with.

Monday morning, while I was drinking coffee, I heard a chainsaw and a crash. Bobby doing his aerial Bucket Truck Ballet 60 feet in the air. Three foot chunks of Sweetgum were crashing to the ground between the power transformer and the deck, missing each by a couple feet. The bigger pieces hanging over the roof, he roped off, cutting them into smaller chunks and laying them over the bucket

Once he got the limbing done there were two very large limbless towers ready for falling. Bobby tied a line to the top of each and to the bucket truck and tensioned the line. He notched and sawed each 30 foot piece dropping them exactly where he wanted them. I asked him if he could section the logs, as they were a bit large for my chainsaw. He pulled out a monster chain saw that sliced through the big logs as if they were butter, making my job much easier.

I've got a mess to clean up and a bunch of firewood, the house is safe until other trees begin to seek the sunlight with there leafy arms after the demise of the Two Towers.

The Ents are not happy. They will seek vengeance. I can feel other trees beginning to eye the sunny spot left by the Two Towers.