think people

Early last month we had a rather unprecedented snowstorm. The unexpected weather then snapped even colder, freezing everything in its wake.

A large cedar on our property suffered terribly. It was not uprooted, nor did a large limb come crashing down upon our house. Rather the tree split in two; one half ended up in the carpark, while the other half remained standing.

Since then, we have become a little nervous about our tree, especially when the wind starts to blow.

We have endured 6 quite severe windstorms this season - today we experienced yet another, and one more large limb went down for the count.

The limb did not break off immediately, it simply hung on by its bark and swayed violently for about 10 minutes before dropping to the ground. Of course this occured just as the kids began emerging from the nearby schools.

Many of the kids were fascinated by the rather precarious looking branch, and stopped to gawk up at it from a safe distance. Others wandered along in a daze, treading under its unstable path quite unaware of the threat hanging over their head. Then there were other kids who dared creep as close as they could to it, and tug at the caught limb to see if they could bring it down; nature took care of that in the end.

Next I know I have a raving woman on my doorstep informing me of the fallen branch.

"I know", I tell her, "I saw it".

"Well it nearly fell on the kids", she says as if I had somehow set it up as a prank or boobey trap.

"Yes I saw that", I tell her, quite at a loss as to what I could have done - we were in the middle of a bloody wind storm after all, "I have rung the council about removing it" (and they could have cared less).

"Well its dangerous!" she rants, glaring at me for a moment before turning on her heel and leaving. Her kids looked back at me accusingly - the same kids who were pulling the branch only moments before.

If you let your kids tempt fate with suspicious looking tree limbs in the middle of a raging storm, they might wind up getting hurt. Now why is that my fault?