That old oak in Springfield finally gave me a real scare

We got a call for a big limb hanging over a garage, looked fine from the ground. I climbed up and my saw pinched hard about two feet into the cut, the whole thing groaned and dropped six inches. My ground guy yelled 'runner!' as a crack shot up the trunk toward me. We had to rig a line from the neighbor's maple to lower it safely, took three extra hours. Anyone had a tree look solid but hold a nasty surprise like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_lucas1mo ago

Yeah that's the thing, it's like everything looks fine on the outside but the inside's shot. You see it with old cars, houses, even people sometimes lol. All the damage is hidden where you can't see it until you put a little pressure on. Makes you second guess stuff you thought was solid for years.

rowanc294d ago

Maybe it's just me, but I've cut into plenty of gnarly-looking trees that ended up being solid as a rock the whole way through, so looks can definitely be deceiving both ways. @the_lucas, you ever had a tree that looked sketchy but turned out totally fine once you got into it?

james_fisher811mo ago

Buddy of mine had a pine that looked perfect. His first cut, the whole trunk just split open like a zipper. Rotten straight through the middle.