Thursday's Tale

Two huge backhoes spent Thursday afternoon in our front right of way removing tree stumps. They clanked, roared, banged, dug, and hissed. And there was the almost continuous DING DING DING compliments of OSHSA - (Occupational Safety and Health Standards Act).

In the US, OSHSA requires most equipment to loudly DING DING DING while backing up. While OSHSA was busy coming up with rules to keep us physically safe, they forgot to consider our sanity.

Dozens of stumps on our frontage and across the road came out easy. The biggest oak stump didn't. It required both backhoes working together. I could feel the house shake when it came loose.

Once they got it out of the ground they threw it around, banged it up and down, and pounded on the top of it to

• a) try to get as much soil out of it as possible because it had left a large crater they needed to fill
  
• b) attempt to get in into pieces so they could fit it into the truck that hauls stumps away.

In this picture, the backhoe on the right is taking his turn with it.


They were unable to break it up. They are going to bring in a low boy (whatever that is) to pick it up and take it away.

Meanwhile, here it sits in the corner of what used to be my front yard.

The top part where sawed is five feet across. The entire trunk mass including root stubs is about twelve feet across.


The dogs were totally nerved up all afternoon. They even did some "marking" in the house in hopes that claiming it would save their home from the horrible creatures destroying their front yard.

Doggy naps were impossible.

When it was time to go to doggy school Thursday evening, they were tired. Very tired.

When it was Pappy's turn to do the agility course which he normally loves, he ran across the building and jumped up in the chair where we'd been sitting.

When it was Sunny's turn to do the agility course which was mostly jumps, her very favorite, she ran along side the jumps instead of going over them.

When we got home, the men were gone and all was quiet. Pappy sacked out to sleep in a limp pile. Sunny slinked under the bed for safety and went to sleep.

Bob reported that after the men left, Glory enjoyed walking out to one of the backhoes and peeing next to it.

They're not done yet. The backhoes are still parked here and they'll be back 7 am Monday morning for more stumps.

To make things even more interesting, a tree crew is scheduled to arrive Monday morning and take down 6 large willow trees along the creek on our property. More about that some other day.