Lumberjack-offs

Lumberjack-offs250Some people spend their weekends cutting each other with sharp invective and bitter insults, but Real Men are out there on the front lines cutting up trees. As I mentioned in my last post, a huge cottonwood fell on my property last week, decapitating some of my exotic folliage and destroying my lattice fence clear on the other side of the backyard.

Fortunately, the Shifters Auxiliary Chainsaw Brigade came to the rescue on Sunday, making short work of the invader. Two saws ripped the offending tree, while the rest of us kept our limbs close to our sides so as not to be caught in their furious assault. We gathered the pathetic remnants and piled them in the yard, as you can see from these photos. Then we lit the still quivering mass of vegetation on fire, and I threw some choice elephant steaks I had flown in from Kenya on top of the flames until they were seared black. We pulled the greasy meat over to our picnic table, where my wife had a tub of crisp Cannabis  salad waiting for the hungry crew. After diving into the meal like frenzied tigers, we washed it down with Bloody Marys and had a nice apricot cobbler for dessert.

Yes, no one will ever hug this tree again. It has paid the ultimate price for messing with my patio furniture, and fouling my yard with its unwanted advances. My heatfelt thanks goes out to the volunteers; Bill Holman, Don Baumgart, Eric Bare and Jeff Falla, for their timely and devastating action to save my yard from this pestilence. Let it be a warning to others.

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9 Responses to Lumberjack-offs

  1. Ben Emery says:

    I can picture the seen now. Bob looking out the window drinking an iced tea laughing with each penetrating drop of the chain onto the enemy that attacked the house and was most likely trying to get at its inhabitants.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaIJKM0sjdo&NR=1&feature=endscreen

  2. Chris Peterson says:

    Gotta’ love a story with a happy ending. I also love the title of your story; Lumberjack-offs. Mrs. Richards would never have approved, but since that class years ago, you’ve put a whole lot of smiles on my face. Thanks.
    Last night on one of the evening cartoons, some guy’s wife was wearing a skimpy outfit covered by a jacket. Someone in the bar yelled, “Take the jacket off”, and everyone started chanting, “Jacket off, jacket off, jacket off.” Pretty clever way to get around the censors.

  3. Judith Lowry says:

    There it is.
    Thanks, Bob.

  4. I trust the Cannabis salad was made with free-range, organically grown grass from a local farmer who uses sustainable agriculture methods, and it just wasn’t some leftovers from the sheriff’s 2012 stash…I mean harvest…I mean seizures.

  5. While I like to think I gave you the idea for the LaMalfa cartoon in The Union, I’ll give you credit for conveying in a few strokes what would take me a thousand words to explain. The pinhead in the big hat was a brilliant idea.

    As for the picture of The Union’s editorial board in today’s edition, everybody but the third guy from the left looks like a solid citizen to me.

    • rl crabb says:

      Just wait, George. They’ll probably get around to running your mug for all to see sooner or later. As for LaMalfa, I’ve been following him in the news for the last month or so. The LA Times even scolded him for his subsidizin’ ways. Neither he nor McClintock are as much fun to pick on as John Doolittle was. Johnny made my job easy.

      • The Union ran my picture about 11 years ago when I wrote an op-ed piece comparing life in Nevada County with my former home, SanMateo County. I’m told the mug shot scared children for miles around.

        I blame it all on John Hart, who insists he was never an apprentice to Mathew Brady.

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