Saturday, January 31, 2009

A fine young Feller.

Here is a quick video of myself felling a dead Noble Fir South of Eugene in Cottage Grove. The tree went a little to the left and smashed one smaller Incense Cedar.
I was the first big tree I have been able to fell in on piece in a long time. I had fun setting up a 3 to 1 Pulley System to pull it over. We did break a branch up high in the tree about halfway through the video so watch for that. Enjoy the destruction.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

New Services Offered by The Community Arborist

I am an Arborist dedicated to better serving my surrounding community through innovation and adaptation. So I am proud to offer two new services; installing deer antlers in trees and rescuing cats stuck in trees.

First new service; Installing deer antlers in trees. This is done to prevent damage to branches and trunk by squirrels. Squirrels are rodents, this means their teeth never stop growing. So rodents will chew on just about anything to keep their teeth from getting to big for their mouths. In the case of squirrels that means chewing on the trees in your back yard. I have witnessed branches chewed more than half way through in Oak trees, trunks of Douglas firs striped all the way around. These injuries weaken the tree making them more prone to a dangerous failure, or death.

Now I know some of my sillier readers might be picturing me mounting a full rack of antlers in a Maple, but that is not how it is. The antlers are cut into 6-8in. lengths with a hole drilled through. After a climbing inspection of the tree I will isolate where squirrels have chewed in the past and install the antlers there. I will us aluminum nails to prevent the nails from rusting away and having antlers dropping from the sky. From my experience squirrels prefer chewing the antlers and will leave the trees alone. One time while cutting down a Douglas Fir I actually found a rib that a squirrel had hauled up into the and had been chewing on.

Here are a few pictures of some chewed on branches. Some are from an Oregon White Oak I recently cut down, and from the Crimson King Maple in my back yard. Last of all there is a picture of an antler installed in my back yard Maple.






Second new service; Cat Rescue. I was inspired to start doing cat rescue by one of the best tree climbers of Pacific Northwest, Dan Kraus. He has been the World Champion Tree Climber and has offered cat rescue since 1999. Since then he has rescued over 600 cats plus an assortment of pet birds, orphaned baby squirrels, model airplanes and pet iguanas. Learn more about Dan Kraus @ http://www.catinatreerescue.com. So I guess I should not limit my services to cats but expand it to any thing stuck in a tree. I have preformed one kite rescue but that is a blog post in it's self.

Don's Doug Fir

On January 15th I had the engaged in the removal of a Douglas Fir. Like most Douglas Firs in the urban environment it had grown to big for it's surroundings. The tree was so wide that it completely shaded out the small orchard on the north side of it. Fruit production had all but stopped in the last few years.
Here is a slide show of the removal all the pictures were taken from the same spot. It show the process very well. I am also pleased to report that the fence and the fruit trees were not harmed during the removal of this tree.