November 30th, 2015: Sweet Chestnut Tree

[Gravdigr]

Around here, the insurance companies will pay to take a tree down occasionally, if it's really a danger. They'll have another guy come in and give his opinion on the situation.

I've done it several times.

[Snakeadelic]

Insurance companies are the devil

SO RIGHT.
My neighbor was in an accident in mid-October, at which time he was on his not-even-a-year-old Harley trike. A pickup truck in front of him started to move out with traffic on a green light, then slammed to a stop. The guy with the truck, it turns out...

1. Didn't have a license.
2. Didn't actually know what a driver's license is.
3. Appeared to be, um, "mentally unfit for complex tasks". Also appeared to be about 30.
4. Could only give his father's contact info.
5. Was known by name by the cops.
6. Left the scene before the cops could get there--most of the info the insurance company wanted was gathered by firefighters who saw the wreck and stopped to help.
7. Was apparently looking for "the ice cream store" and slammed on the brakes because he was on a 5-lane highway that had no other lights until the south end of Missoula at least 8 miles up the road.

According to the fire department, police, and everyone who's even heard the story, this dude either needs LOTS of outpatient help or needs to be institutionalized. According to my neighbor's insurance company, guess who's at fault? Yep, it turned out to be "You are so lucky the frame is intact because otherwise we'd total it, and since IT IS YOUR FAULT we would not help you replace your $27K Harley." If you hit an incompetent, unlicensed driver from behind because of their illegal driving behavior, YOU are at fault because you hit them from behind, end of story.

So yes, insurance companies have long been on my list of industries I have suspected are demonically connected!

We're losing all our big trees . The tree where I photographed a peregrine falcon, gone. The tree where I photographed a bald eagle one New Year's Eve, gone. The trees where the kestrels used to nest across the street from the falcon tree and down the block from the eagle tree, gone. Even one of the not-so-huge landscaping trees at the apartments I live in blew over this spring. The others were all cottonwoods, famous for growing fast, rotting fast, and dying relatively young. All the big ones on the county fairgrounds were taken down several years ago after a falling branch nailed some poor girl's car to the road while she and her best friend were inside and it was in motion, so yes, they're dangerous.

According to the local arborist, every single big cottonwood in the Bitterroot Valley is doomed. Since he's the kind of guy who hates topping trees (it kills just about all of them, since they grow from the top) and won't take a big tree down until AFTER baby-bird season, I'm kind of inclined to trust him. He says the more we pull out of the aquifers under this valley, the faster we're losing trees whose taproots are not long or sturdy enough to reach down to the new water levels. Thank heavens I don't have to live in the San Joaquin Valley!