Men in Trees

smudge....."We had excitement last week." We had men in our trees."

ollie....."Men in trees is very expensive. This post should be called Vanishing Temptations."



smudge...."But its for our own good. At least thats what the biped says."

biped....."Every winter we have at least one ice storm. Ice storms happen when the temperature hovers between 28 to 33 degrees. Any colder and you'd have either sleet or snow. The precipitation comes down as a liquid until it hits something like a tree or power line. Once it hits it immediately freezes. The power lines sag and the tree limbs get very heavy and they start breaking. The limbs hit the already stressed power lines and all of a sudden you're sitting in the dark. Here in the Ozarks the power can be out for a week to ten days."



biped...."And contrary to what certain kitties say, it doesn't cost any Temptations to get the trees near the power lines trimmed."

ollie...."That dead tree is no where near a power line. The man cut down the dead oak tree after you begged him."

smudge...."There goes my dead oak tree. When I was a widdle wild cat I used to run like the wind and climb to the top of dat tree."



ollie...."All gone. And then they started this really loud machine which ate whole trees."

smudge...."It was so embarrassing to hear the biped talking really sweet to the tree trimming guys."





ollie...."Then the biped asked the man to trim the trees so we could look out in the forest. We can see the momma deer now."



ollie...."Then they fed all the trees to the chopper machine and the truck filled up with oak and pine mulch."


smudge...."That's a whole tree that the man is putting in the machine. It took less than a minute to chop it up."

ollie...."Yeah and it took less than a minute before the biped started finigel'n how she was going to get all that mulch for her garden."

smudge...."Totally embarrassing. You shoulda seen her trying to sweet talk that guy."



smudge ...."And sure enough the man dumped a whole truck load of mulch in our yard."



smudge...."And just when we thought it was safe to show our faces we heard this conversation."

ollie...."Totally embarrassing."
biped...."Uh is that brush hog down the road part of your crew?"

man...."Yeah that's ours."

biped..."Could it possibly make a detour to our yard and widen our driveway?
(the brush hog is a machine that tears out and shreds large bushes and small to medium sized trees. They use it to knock a path to the power lines so their other equipment can get in. Almost every male Ozarkian has a brush hog and he will clear your land with it for $50.00 an hour. This isn't so bad except he wants a guarantee of 8 hours work to show up."

smudge...."That's a lot of Temptations."

biped...."Anyway the nice man said...."

man...."I'll see what I can do."



smudge...."And when da biped woke up the next morning the driveway was all cleaned up which is good."

ollie...."Good?"

smudge...."Yes, da man in da delivery truck can now find our house when da biped orders our Temptations."

ollie...."When? You mean if don't ya?"

smudge...."A mancat can dream can't he."