My front yard has a pine tree that is seventy-five feet tall if it's a foot. It's so tall the branches don't start growing out of the trunk for the first twenty feet up.
You wouldn't know it's even there unless you notice the trunk, or just happen to 'look up' for what ever reason...
It's not serving me any purpose at all.
I mean,.. it's a pine tree. It doesn't make pine-apples, just pinecones, and their not even the kind a person with a whole lot of time on their hands could possibly make Xmas decorations with.
It's a pinon pine and the cones resemble little "dog logs" laying around on the ground.
In fact, I've tripped over my self a few times around here thinking I am about to step in dog doo-doo, and while quickly side stepping around it, trip and step on it anyway, wrenching by back then damning the thing cause it fooled me into thinking it was a puppy nugget.
It's like,.. I am more miffed about being 'fooled' than the option of squishy dog goo pasted on the bottom of my boot....weird.....
The tree doesn't even provide shade, except maybe for the Moon, cause it's too damn tall.
We get the Santa Ana winds through here sometimes up to ninety miles an hour. For the first five years I lived here I couldn't go to sleep at night during those winds cause I was terrified that tree was going to break in half and land on the roof of the house killing everybody inside.
Worse than that, the direction of the prevailing wind threatened the house next door to me even more than my place.
I just knew I was going to wake up one day to cops pounding at my front door waiting to enlighten me my snapped tree caved in the entire roof of the neighbors house killing their precious puppy.
But this tree is a survivor. It's withstood the test of time.
Draught, blistering heat, fifteen degree winter nights, and year after year of the March and November monster winds. Matter of fact, this house was built in 1952, the year I was born.
I figure the tree was planted about the same time, so it's as old as I am.
It's lived here a heck of a lot longer than me too. So there lies the rub.....
Yea, I could climb up to the top of the thing with a chain saw strapped to me and take it down a little at a time until there's nothing left but a little stump to set a bird feeder on.
Or, because I am afraid of heights, I have thought of tieing a big link chain around it and pulling it down with my pickup. Right down on the road then cut the sucker up and provide California with enough heat to solve the 'energy crisis'.
But then I think about it and.....what gives me the right?...
The tree has done me no wrong. It's a testament to the will to survive actually.
Besides, I'd probably just bend it over pulling it with the truck turning it into a humungous archery bow until the truck lost traction and it and I were slung shot off the ground flying clean over the house and landing square on top of the neighbors house behind me....Bummer,..it's a no win situation.
Anyway, for some unknown reason animals come here.
Every pet that has adopted me just came here.
I open the front door and dogs are sitting there waiting for me to take them in.
Cats, whole litters of cats fall out of the ceilings.
Every freak within twenty miles that can't 'deal' with their pet drops it off here, cause "those people will take it in".
Now I got turkey buzzards living in the pine tree. At the very top of the pine tree.
It started last year around this same time. I go outside to go to work and my car is covered in bird 'excrement'.
I mean it looks like somebody spray painted my entire car in a cheap quality white wash.
It gets a 'little annoying' having to hang my head out the driver door window to make it up to the local gas station so I can use their squeegee to wash bird droppings off my windshield..
And, of course there are the leers and snickers from the 'easily amused' at the gas station when I pull up...
Why is it in a town of four hundred people, three hundred and ninety of them have to show up at the gas station just as I am pulling in with my car covered in bird crap?
Last year after about a month of this....poop, I just kept a garden hose in the front with a high power nozzle on the end, and every lovely day I would just stand there hosing down the car while the turkey buzzards watched.
I know they finally left sometime in mid May.
The weather finally heated up enough they didn't need the tree anymore to catch the first sunlight of the day to warm them up. I know this because one day in May I went out and turned on the hose to do my daily 'thing' and it was hotter than Hades outside.
The bird poop was there of course and when the water hit the windshield that day I heard a cracking sound.
I looked closer and there was this big long crack in my windshield that wasn't there a minute ago.
I guess the heat of the day got the windshield hot and the cold water hitting it......
Still got the crack in my windshield, it's slowly gotten bigger and bigger.
One of these days I am going to use the squeegee at the gas station and my whole windshield will just cave right in and be sitting on my front seat with me standing there holding the dripping squeegee in my hand....(snicker, snicker, leer, leer).
I don't know man, ...these...birds are, well...kind of majestic in their own way.
If you get up early and drive around Lake Morena when the sun is still new in the sky you'll see these turkey buzzards sitting on top of telephone poles along side the road.
They will be perched there facing the sun and have their wings stretched completely out warming themselves.
Some of em have a six foot wing span, and they have a kind of Egyptian quality to them when their doing that.
Like their worshiping the sun or something. It's actually pretty cool.
So now I got them back again this year...
I went out a couple of days ago and the tarp covering my motorcycle was all covered in,..you know.
Chafed me right off cause the Santa Ana was blowing, the car is 'white washed', the side of the truck is spattered, and the front tire of my bike is all white.
I just cleaned and polished the frigging bike the day before.
The tarp has one mission in life,.. to blow off the bike so the buzzards have a bigger target and I am trying to secure the thing to the bike while dogging periodic bird smart bombs.
I get the feeling the 'easily amused' at the gas station aren't the only ones doing the snickering...
