When a raccoon hid in the hollow of a tree in 2016, Marco and Greyson, my sister’s dogs, lost their damn minds. Having a great deal of Black Lab in them, they were hunting dogs and as such, wanted to hunt the raccoon. The raccoon was not amusedand not coming out to play. I dragged the dogs away and the raccoon slipped out and was gone.
The Cousins dogs were returned to my sister back in 2019. The rain came in 2023 and flooded the back of the property.That tree sat in water for nearly two years and finally died.
Yesterday, the 27th of May, I finally took the tree down with a chainsaw, and as always, using a chainsaw can be an adventure.
Dead and hollow, like my dreams of finding romance at my age, the tree offered me an opportunity to watch the trunk splinter and crack, possibly falling apart, and maybe even falling in a direction I could not predict. Videos of this sort of thing are terrifying for those of us who use chainsaws.
I cut the notch and was happy. The notch did not get into the hollow yet looked deep enough to guide the fall in the right direction. As I began the main cut into the truck, opposite the notch, the cutting was easy, too easy, as the hollow offered no resistance. I stopped and drove in two wedges, to keep the tree from settling back on the saw, and to ease it in the direction I wanted it to fall. I cut a few inches more and the wedges began to vibrate. This meant they were loose and the tree was leaning in the right direction. I started cutting again and as soon as the wedges fell out, away I went, saw in hand. The tree began a perfect fall.
And perfect was this all. Then the falling tree caught on the limbs of another tree that had died. For a brief moment in time I looked on and thought to myself, yeah, it can just stay there. I aimed for the woods, the woods I hit, and… then the tree branches holding the felled tree all started snapping. The fell tree began falling again, but the branches that held it up also changed its momentum. The tree kicked back, about ten feet, and had I been standing where I had been cutting this would be a much more interesting story, or last week really would have been the last week. Back ten feet, over three, and it almost got my metal wagon.
When you cut a tree, and it starts falling, you better be moving. Move as far away as you think you should and add ten feet.
Imagine the butt end of that tree hitting you.
Take Care,
Mike
That does look like a perfect tree for a racoon home. Poor critter probably thought he had found Nirvana until the Cousin Dogs sniffed it out. Glad they didn’t get into a tangle with it. Those guys have bitey teeth and long rippy claws.
Raccoon are nasty fighters that are going to get their licks in. One nearly killed Aqaba. It says a lot about that little cat he was able to get away at all.
I think the Cousins were all talk. They thought they wanted a fight, but I do not think they knew what they were getting into.
I’m so glad you weren’t standing where you were standing!
No chance, Sue. As soon as those wedges started falling I was moving. I ‘ve seen some weird things with falling trees. It’s a lot of energy and a lot of things can happen. None of those things are worth getting close to.
If a tree falls in a forest I don’t want to be close to it. I don’t care if it makes a sound or a noise, but let me get away!
Yeah, that looks like it would have left a mark. Glad you knew to move, Mike.
Tim, I was trained by seasoned veterans. People who knew what they were doing and knew how to do it as safely as possible. My cutting partner for years was a woman who would stand there and talk about what to do and how to do it and what could could wrong for an hour before she picked up the saw. I never saw her make a mistake. My next tree is one I’ve been looking at for a few days. I’m putting a cable on it and pulling it as I cut.
You didn’t say what happened to the raccoon.
Okay ^THAT^ was AWESOME
Mike, that’s a great example of how to notch a tree, Notice that it extends maybe a third of the way through, not as deep as people like to think it needs to be. Go to deep and you weaken the sides of the tree and you might get it heading in a direction you do not want.
Bunk, although the Cousin Canines were large, and had an abundance of Black Lab in them, their hunting prowess was spent finding the best place to nap. And even once I took them inside, the the raccoon made good his escape, they still haunted the tree for days.