Whack! Whack! Whack! (What’s that noise?)

The other day I’m working in my office when I hear this rhythmic thumping/whacking sound.

Neighbor’s kid playing basketball?

Then I catch it out of the corner of my eye: It’s our tree guy chopping down a tree–with an axe! And he has to be well into his 60s.

He used the axe to pull up the root ball, too. 

His crew showed up a few minutes later.

“I took down the tree, so you can drag it out front.”

“How’d you do that?”

“With my axe.”

Old school, baby. 

Then he climbed up like 50 feet to thin out a few of the big trees. He used a chainsaw and hand saw for that. 

And, for the record, the tree was d-e-a-d. Best the arborist can tell–the arborist being the guy with the axe–the tree got spun around a bit during the last hurricane. That cracked the bark on the trunk, allowing a bug infestation. Once we noticed that the tree wasn’t doing well, it died very soon after. 

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

Yes, like that. 

Old guys are tough. 

My father still splits wood with an 8-pound maul. He can swing that thing for hours. He's 84. 

I'm 56 and I'd be cripple after 15 minutes.