Out on a limb
Out on a limb
Rescuers came to the aid of a man who got stuck dangling 60 feet high in a tree while trying to retrieve his lost drone. Daniel Lacourse’s drone got caught in the tree at Lafayette Park in Manchester, New Hampshire two weeks ago. Earlier efforts to free it didn’t work, so he borrowed a friend’s climbing gears, looked up “how to climb” on YouTube and went up the tree Wednesday. Once he got up there, Lacourse was just hanging onto a rope and says he “just didn’t expect it to be so difficult and take so much endurance.” His friend called the fire department. Firefighters used a hydraulic ladder truck to secure Lacourse’s equipment and bring him back down. Lacourse says he won’t try a climb like that again.
For years I lived in places with no trees, so I was thrilled to move to a home in the woods. When a tree shoot began to grow next to our front sidewalk, I was delighted, and I pampered the sapling by fertilizing, watering and offering it tender, loving care, yet appeared to weaken. I poured on more fertilizer, the tree still struggled for life. I was baffled until one evening when my husband and I arrived home, he yanked the tree out of the ground. Incredulous, I asked, “Why did you do that?” “That stupid tree,” he replied. “I have been feeding it weed killer for weeks and it just wouldn’t die.”
There was a lady visitor for the first time in California looking at the great outdoors. She asked to the guide, “What kind of tree is that?” The guide explained this is a fig tree. She replied, “No, it can’t be a fig tree” and the guide said, “Yes, ma’am, that’s a fig tree.” “Well! I thought the leaves would be a lot bigger than that.”
When we decided to sell our house on our own. We nailed two “For Sale” signs to the two trees in front of our house. Before long the doorbell rang and a young man inquired, “How much do you want for the trees?”
17 trees are saved by every ton of existing paper that is recycled. That means if we pulped every Harry Potter book, we wouldn’t be able to see the sky for all the trees.