Red Maple and brass wool

[Robert Green]

The logging crane came by today to remove the 2 foot wide 20 foot high stump left from the chainsawing operation. They put a chain around the top, tensioned it, and a guy with the longest bladed chainsaw I have ever seen (Stihl?) just cut the base off. When the tree popped loose, it swung around pretty wildly and it took three "wranglers" to settle it down. Then they dumped it on the lawn (leaving a huge gully in the lawn) and sawed it up some more.

The base of the tree was very rotten inside (about a 9" diameter section) so there's no question it was a hazard. What I found in the middle really astounded me. In the very middle of the tree, about six feet from the ground and 12' from the top was a pocket of black silt studded with very bright, very noticeable pieces of brass wool. Also, a foil red star of the kind that 3rd grade teachers attach to exams. WTF? I couldn't trace the channel what with the tree crew screaming at me in Spanish about my cabeza and pinatas but it may have gone all the way up into the broken branch.

Bird? Squirrel? Elf tweaker? It's pretty hard to miss bright shiny copper color ribbons while sifting through jet black material that looked like wet sawdust colored with black ink.

-- Bobby G.

[Gordon Shumway]

Possibly the previous owner had some children that were good in school and one of them may have got a red star for their effort. Your tree may have also later rewarded by that child. The copper colored ribbons were obviously placed there by aliens... or not.

Gordon Shumway

When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both.

[norminn]

Bird's nest? Birds here love styrofoam peanuts and the fiber liners for my hanging flower baskets :o)

[Robert Green]

I know that some birds, like crows, love shiny things. I suspect this was a nest under development. What was odd was how deep inside the center of the tree the items were. Another blessed mystery, I suppose.

-- Bobby G.