"Dazy keeps it simple: heart rot, butt rot, root rot."

December 2, 2021 3:50 PM

Author Mary Roach's new book Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law has many excellent chapters on human/wildlife interaction. Here is one chapter about "danger trees," trees that are "dead soft" but not yet "dead fallen" and she talks to tree faller (or faller blaster) Dave "Dazy" Weymer about his work blowing up the tops of trees so that they don't come down unannounced and kill people. Here are a few Dazy Weymer videos from YouTube: an intro to being a faller blaster, felling a big spruce (no explosives) and blasting a small snag.
posted by jessamyn (22 comments total)

Watching someone who is really good at their job is always enjoyable, and he clearly knows his trade. At the same time, watching all those plunge cuts with the chainsaw makes me nervous -- I have seen some dangerous near-misses with those before.

Also, I'm always amazed at the steepness of the terrain that they routinely log in BC.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:43 PM on December 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

This is so metal.
posted by not_on_display at 8:36 PM on December 2, 2021

heart rot, butt rot, root rot

Immediately brought to mind my first boyfriend. Like, unexpectedly so, but I guess that's how well it applies. RIP, or something.
posted by hippybear at 8:40 PM on December 2, 2021 [3 favorites]

> RIP, or something.

TNT
posted by not_on_display at 8:42 PM on December 2, 2021

Falling limbs, especially big ones--the kind that you could imagine you and two or three of your friends perching on when you were kids--is no joke. I was camping as part of RAGBRAI in an Iowa park when one came down square on someone's tent, apropos of nothing. Luckily for the occupant, it wasn't occupied at the time, but it could have really done some damage, and the tent was squashed.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:44 PM on December 2, 2021

On the broader topic of "Fuzz," I am an enormous fan of all the breathless local coyote commentary on NextDoor. (My town is BANG UP AGAINST a huge forest preserve FULL OF COYOTES, so they wander into town seeking trash a lot.) People are incredibly fucking panicked that coyotes and foxes exist, and post non-stop updates about them existing in the eyeline of humans, and it just consistently cracks me up. I mean, I am 100% in favor of "yo there's a coyote in this area, take your small dogs inside" but this is like "I SAW A SMALL ANIMAL THAT MAY HAVE BEEN A COYOTE OR POSSIBLY A LARGE SQUIRREL ...." and then everyone in the nearby neighborhoods posts updates on the coyote/squirrel's location. Also we have gotten melanistic squirrels in literally the last five years but nobody posts melanistic squirrel updates? Seriously misplaced priorities, who DOESN'T want to see black squirrels? A coyote a block from the forest preserve at 6 a.m.? That's just Tuesday, nobody needs updates.

But the MOST hilarious thing was, a local woman recently became CONVINCED she'd seen a cougar. In the Chicago suburbs. Next to the interstate. (Literally right next to it, that was her location identification, in a small wooded "island" completely cut off by major roads on all sides.) So she called the village police to go shoot the cougar. Who told her that a) that was county land where they could not shoot things, and b) it was definitely not a cougar. She was FUCKING INCENSED and took to Facebook and NextDoor to rally the townsfolk against both the cougar menacing our children and the cops who refused to protect them.

Now, cougars do occasionally roam through Illinois. (6 to 10 in the last 18 years -- the one in Roscoe Village, the only one in the Chicago area, was using the river as a highway when it was spotted, not like randomly marauding through urban areas.) But it is SUCH an enormous big deal when they do that it is literally non-stop TV news every single night with updates on the cougar's position, and the Department of Nature Resources (DNR) officers (Roach's "Fuzz"!) track them CLOSELY. MINUTELY. They close state and city parks when a cougar is REMOTELY nearby so hikers or families don't accidentally run across them, because unlike California people we don't know to shout at them and not run, we just cower and act like small prey animals and probably get eaten (but not enough of them are in the state to know for sure if they eat us for being cowards).

The local woman was unconvinced and demanded the village police go kill the cougar, and kept rallying people on social media to harass local government for not killing the cougar. Everyone kept telling her 1) She saw a red fox, not a cougar; 2) If she did see a cougar on county land, local cops had zero authority to shoot it and would have to call county or state wildlife police; 3) If somebody other than DNR cops shoot a cougar in Illinois, somebody's going to jail unless that cougar was trying to eat their face; and 4) SHOOTING A COUGAR WITH A SERVICE PISTOL IS A HORRIBLE IDEA THAT WILL END WITH SOMEONE DEAD. Especially when it's a local cop who hasn't been trained to shoot GIANT PREDATORS. I mean, honestly, our local cops don't even deal with possums or raccoons, let alone coyotes or foxes. What the fuck are they going to do with a gloriously sleek predator made of nothing but muscle who outweighs them and moves hella faster? (Get eaten, that's what. We're not Californians. We don't know how to scare them off. Our DNR cops literally import cougar guys from other states when there's one in Illinois.)

I don't really have an ending to this story, because I don't know if the woman gave up or if she got banned from facebook and nextdoor for her non-stop harassment of local officials about their total failure to mount posses to hunt imaginary cougars. But it was utterly hilarious, and I kind-of feel bad for the completely imaginary cougar who was definitely not sitting calmly next to I-94 chilling in plain sight in broad daylight.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:48 PM on December 2, 2021 [9 favorites]

These are great and I love Mary Roach! I just bought one of my partners a complete set of her books for Christmas via hunting them down on Thriftbooks!
posted by fairlynearlyready at 12:00 AM on December 3, 2021 [2 favorites]

Fantastic book, par for the course for Mary Roach, who excels at taking the reader into a world you knew next to nothing about before you picked up her book. The chapter about the bears in Colorado is a standout. Fun fact: Building codes for the city of Vail doesn’t allow French handles on exterior doors as they are laughably easy for bears to open. They even refer to them as “bear levers”.
posted by dr_dank at 3:19 AM on December 3, 2021 [11 favorites]

This is so metal.

Danger Trees: When Wood is Metal.
posted by otherchaz at 5:33 AM on December 3, 2021

I also love the coyote commentary on my Nextdoor. Coyotes are entirely commonplace in this neighborhood (the neighborhood itself is very urban but we have a large park and two cemeteries as our boundaries, more or less), so the commentary is not generally panicky or overheated. At most, someone might add a "remember not to leave your tiny dog/cat unattended outside at night" kind of note.

As a person who's mostly nocturnal myself, I encounter them pretty often. It's just a wonderful and weird thrill to see one strolling down a sidewalk, happy as you please, as if it were going to the corner store to pick up a soda.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:22 AM on December 3, 2021 [1 favorite]

(Our coyotes seldom concern themselves with housepets, though, because the neighborhood is also COMPLETELY OVERRUN with bunnies. In theory, I hate the thought of a cute bunny judgment day; in practice, there are too many goddamn bunnies.)
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:23 AM on December 3, 2021 [3 favorites]

breathless local coyote commentary on NextDoor.

you're 1/2 way across the country but we have the same Nextdoor feed. We occasionally have cougars in the neighborhood too though.
posted by Dr. Twist at 9:05 AM on December 3, 2021 [1 favorite]

For those who enjoy watching expert tree work, may I recommend binge-watching BC's Reg Coates. Here's one called Danger Tree Blasting. And I admired the accuracy between ~ minutes 11-15 in this video.
posted by kiblinger at 4:22 PM on December 3, 2021

I watched the “felling a big spruce” video and it reminded me of the old-school tree feller I hired to take care of a dead pine in my backyard. There’s not a lot of room back there, and plenty of things to get crushed by an errant felled tree, but damn if this guy didn’t fell it perfectly. It landed on one of the few patches of grass, avoiding the bushes, flowers, other trees, shed etc. I was impressed!
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 7:46 PM on December 3, 2021 [1 favorite]

We occasionally have cougars in the neighborhood too though.

So many upstanding young men ruined by those prowling 50something housewives...
posted by hippybear at 8:01 PM on December 3, 2021 [2 favorites]

"because the neighborhood is also COMPLETELY OVERRUN with bunnies. In theory, I hate the thought of a cute bunny judgment day; in practice, there are too many goddamn bunnies.)"

I don't know, have you ever seen a somewhat-endangered hawk take out a bunny? Because honestly it put me fully on Team Hawk, it was AMAZING.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:09 PM on December 3, 2021 [1 favorite]

Obviously what you need to do is release a bunch of hawks into the bunny-overrun neighborhood. That should solve the problem!
posted by hippybear at 10:54 AM on December 4, 2021 [1 favorite]

Obviously what you need to do is release a bunch of hawks into the bunny-overrun neighborhood. That should solve the problem!

I beg to differ. You have to use non-native invasive species to take care of these kinds of issues. Plant some bamboo and throw some zebra mussels into the local aquifer. That'll take care of those bunnies!
posted by ensign_ricky at 10:42 AM on December 5, 2021 [1 favorite]

cane toads? after you plant the bamboo, or course.
posted by hippybear at 11:33 AM on December 5, 2021 [1 favorite]

cane toads? after you plant the bamboo, or course.

Yes! I think the solution is to allow the invasive species to consume all of the local resources to starve the bunnies. What could go wrong?
posted by ensign_ricky at 1:11 PM on December 5, 2021 [1 favorite]

Hey y'all have you heard the good news about LOCUSTS?
posted by jessamyn at 2:03 PM on December 5, 2021 [2 favorites]

Dang jessamyn. You went all biblical plague on us.

I like it!
posted by ensign_ricky at 3:41 PM on December 6, 2021 [1 favorite]