Tree removal.

So, a few weeks ago in the afternoon I was getting ready to go get a haircut, when I see someone in an bright orange t-shirt go across the backyard in front of my house, and as I pull my blinds down and get ready to go and I step outside, it turns out that it's the tree removal people who came to take care of the tree of heaven that's in the backyard in front of my house and grew up next to another native tree and has been choking it out.

"Is that your car?", they're like, pointing to the car of the one of the college kids from upfront, that was parked behind the fence in the back alley.

"No, it's my neighbor's," I was like, and I led them around front to show them the door that leads to their apartment.

And, the tree removal guys knocked and knocked, and the one knocking said that music was playing so they were home, and the music had stopped for a bit and then started up again, but he couldn't figure it out, and he guessed they could still do it with the crane even if the car was parked.

Meanwhile, I was talking with another guy, who was telling me that trees of heaven are crap and are brittle and can split and fall really easy.

"If I was your landlord, I'd take that other one out, too," the (young) (bearded) (tatted) (white) tree removal guy in a wifebeater and who had profuse untrimmed armpit hair was like. "Those Siberian maples are crap."

And, he said that if you pull it up with a crane and let it hang and put a bucket underneath it, you can get five gallons of water quick, easy, the water comes out of that tree so fast.

"Did you see the water bleeding out of it where a branch was cut?", he was like. "It's like that, but worse."

I told him that it made sense to leave it for the shade, but I was wondering if it would recover.

"You can do that," he was like, and then he said that it would recover fast, you'd be surprised, but especially next spring, and the other guys gave expressions of rough agreement.

I then said that I wasn't sure if it would stand up in storms, it's so spindly, and the guy was like, "You'd be surprised, I had a tree stand in one of those for deer hunting, and the wind blows, and I'm sitting there, and it goes like this four feet back and forth, but it stood, those trees'll stand."

One also added that for a storm, that kind of tree survives better than sturdier and more rigid trees, like the one hanging over the north end of my back cottage.

Later, after my haircut, I came back and the tree of heaven was mostly gone, and it was just this giant trunk dangling like forty feet up like ten feet away from my neighbor's car, from the crane parked like five feet in back of my neighbor's car, where his car was like all boxed in by tree removing equipment and the giant tree being removed.

And, I don't drive, but if I did, I sure wouldn't want my car there.

At one point, too, I also mentioned to the tree removal workers that after that tree of heaven is now out, "I bet the squirrels are confused as f*ck," and then I explained that that was one of their favorite paths, to hop down onto the roof of my cottage.