Pulling Down The Widow-makers

Hurricanes Laura and Delta rolled through here about a year and four months ago, leaving a wide swath of destruction.  We posted about it several times back then.  Our son's home was finally repaired after a year.  There are still plenty of "blue roofs" around.  I'm speaking of the blue tarps used to cover leaky roofs.  I assume some did not have homeowner's coverage or are waiting for final settlement.

We were so fortunate to not have damage.  One thing we did have is a LOT of branches/limbs down.  If it would ever get cold here, we'd burn some of the firewood in the fireplace that we got from a bunch of the larger limbs.  I've been splitting them up with an ax.  There is one hazard remaining, though.  Widow makers.  Widow Makers are large limbs that were broken off by the hurricane force winds.  They hang downward, but are caught by other limbs that prevent gravity from doing its job and bringing them down to earth.  Some are WAY up there and some are BIG!  If they would fall on you while you were walking underneath them, well, there is a reason for why they are called widow makers.  We'll leave it at that.

Tricia has been telling me that they were dangerous.  She mentioned that we could just be walking out to the fire pit or simply walking in the backyard and a gust of wind would blow and POOF - a large limb would fall on our heads.  So I was sort of inspired to do something about it.  The other afternoon I did.  Here is one widow maker that will not cause an outlay by our life insurance policy.  It took me a while, but I got it down.

And here is another.  This one was way up high in the tree.  It took probably 20 minutes to get this one down.  It crashed to the ground and broke in two.  Yeah, that would have left a scar on my head for sure.  What's that long rope on the bottom left, you ask?  That is my nifty ACME Widow Maker Removal Apparatus that I invented.

All it requires is a long rope, something heavy like a log to tie on the end, and a lot of patience to operate this device.  You throw it up in the air, trying to make it loop over the widow maker.  When you miss, you just have to have quick reflexes so the log you've tied on the end doesn't hit you.  Then you throw it up there again.  Over time, you'll get it.  The important thing is that once you've looped it over, you quickly wrap the rope around the log 'anchor' that is up in the tree by running around several times.  This is crucial.  If you don't wrap it around, when you pull it, the rope and log will simply pull over the widow maker and plummet back to earth.

We got 'em down!  Now we can walk in the backyard in peace without hard hats!