The Chainsaw Massacre

So at 4:30 PM yesterday afternoon my brother showed up with his chainsaw and demanded to know what we needed chopped. We had previously discussed possibly trimming and/or cutting down some of the trees in our new yard, but did not have any firm plans. Apparently my brother thought if he showed up with a chainsaw and some attitude we would give him something to cut. Well, it worked.

This is a street view of the front of our house. As you can see, we've got a bit of a forest.

Mitch & Than attacked the trees and twenty minutes later the tree on the right looked like this. The other pine got a trim too, and then the boys moved onto the backyard.

This large tree is in our backyard. We had a landscaper check out our yard on Thursday (what a coincidence) and he recommended we cut off most of the lower branches to even-up the tree. Mitch thought that was a great idea.

Mitch & Than scoping out the tree. Note the rope.

The plan is for Mitch to cut the branch, which Than will then "catch" with the rope and lower to the ground.

The branch yanked Than off of the  ground and crashed into the house, ripping down our telephone line.

Well, the rope idea didn't work exactly as planned, but we weren't too upset about the phone line. We only cell phones anyway. I thought this would be the end of the excitement, but I was wrong. Another twenty minutes later and I looked out my window to see this:

That's right, the chainsaw-ladder combo. Because operating a custom-made chainsaw isn't dangerous enough; you have hold the chainsaw over your head while precariously balancing on a ladder to really make it interesting. Than did it to, on the other side of the tree, although he managed to escape being photographed.

I can't say I'm a big advocate of this. I had a volunteer slice off the tip of his finger with the table saw at work that Thursday afternoon (yet another coincidence) and I had just lined up a safety-review meeting for the roundhouse no more than two hours before this went down in my backyard. So much for safety! This pretty much scared the bejeezus out of me and I quietly ignored what they were doing. I figured me screaming "What the hell are you doing? You're going to cut off your arm! GET DOWN." out the window wouldn't help anything. So I pretended not to hear the chainsaw and stayed away from the windows. In the end the boys lived, the trees got a good haircut, and my volunteer didn't lose his finger (they sutured it back on). I suppose all's well that end's well - but if you're going to try and pull this off, I suggest you map out the quickest route to the hospital and have a cooler with ice on hand before you get started...