Okay, so I’m not really a treeslayer–the tree was already dead. And I’m not really the actual slayer–I’m more the manager of slaying whilst Mr. Xandra is the wielder of the chainsaw. Because my halflings immediately cleave to my legs the minute Mommy does something interesting, and I just can’t see Child Welfare looking with a kind eye on a mother attempting to chainsaw a fifty-foot dead ash tree with two children attached to her legs. But did I man the phones with 911 on speed-dial in any case.

Most of our backyard is actually woods, and we’re okay with that–it’s why we picked the lot. Neither I nor Mr. Xandra has fantasies about mowing acres of grass stretching into the sunset like a green sea upon which an investment in a John Deere is required. But we have a little patch of backyard with trees and grass (greener in stripes where the septic leach field runs–at least we’ll never have to guess where our leach lines are), and among those trees are a few who are ready to contribute to the next generation of new growth.

So in the course of cleaning up the backyard to make ready for the treehouse that Mr. Xandra my darling children so richly deserve and so badly desire, we knew we had to remove a forked Ash tree that, while still pretty hale, was nevertheless dead, and bound to fall at some point in the future. And tall enough to hit the house if it fell in the wrong direction. So it was in our best interests–and those of my sunroom, where I’m typing this blog entry now, to make sure the tree fell in the not-wrong direction (i.e., any direction away from the house, thankyouverymuch). Therefore…out goes the Mister, chainsaw in hand.

I follow, phone in hand and the numbers “9″ and “1″ already dialed, my finger hovering over the last “1,” and my other hand restraining two half-chunks literally hopping up and down with excitement (or bloodlust at the idea that in a few short moments, Daddy may be severing a limb). I hear the growl of 2.0 liter and the maniacal laughter of Man In His Element (whatever else it may be, it involves destruction and power tools).

The tree consists of a fork, the cleft of which is about two feet above the ground, so in reality, this single about to become deadfall is two trees, joined at the trunk. Had the tree been alive, we would have stretched a length of elastic sheeting between the two forks and proceeded to pick off the low-flying aircraft in whose landing path our house stands, as they cruise towards the runway of our microscopic county airport. But alas, the prongs are as dead as doornails and wouldn’t support more than one round of jetez la vache with slingshot.

As Mr. Xandra starts in on the first fork (maniacal laughter and screaming chainblade both revolving at about 1600 rpm), the chips begin to fly. I notice that he’s cutting out the wedge (just like the internetz told us to), but not making the angles connect on this side. A few minutes more of us yelling at each other over chainsaw and children renders the problematic connection made, and he starts in on the other side, pausing as the tree teeters on a finger’s-width of intact wood. “Who wants to yell ‘timber!’ ” he cries.

Immediately, the children yell, “Timber!” because this is great fun for them.

Nothing happens. So Mr. Xandra walks around the tree right in front of the wedge-cutout (the rule is that wherever you cut the wedge, that’s the direction the tree is supposed to fall). For a split-second, I can see the future, and it is not a pretty future. It involves a permanently cross-eyed husband, at the most hopeful.

But that damn tree mocks me. It ain’t goin’ anywhere. Only after a mad rain of full-body blows (Mr. Xandra is not a small man) does the first fork take a ponderous liking to the laws of gravity and make a graceful, if lumbering (I ask no pardon for the pun, either) fall towards assuming the horizontal. It shatters into four pieces, showing the mold and termite damage of the top. Yeah…glad that one came down before it got blown down…on my house.

Next up, Fork Two. This one leans the other way, so Mr. Xandra begins his Reign of Destruction on the opposite side, creating the wedge, which to me looks more and more like a disaster waiting for an opportunity. “Hey!” I yell in between growls and roars of the chainsaw, “You’re gonna get caught in the fork of the walnut!” Meaning the black walnut tree next to the dead one, whose fork begins about fifteen feet up.

“What?” he yells back and guns the chainsaw again, obviously very interested in my warnings. I ponder changing my name to Cassandra, but I yell again, “You’re gonna catch it in the fork of the walnut! Shift the wedge towards the garden!” I’m accompanying this one with dramatic hand gestures.

“Mommy, you look like you’re water-bending,” says the boy, who watches too many cartoons. I think I look more like a freaked-out wife trying to avoid a trip to the ER. As my kids are well aware, Mommy Doesn’t Want To Spend Another Weekend In The Emergency Room. But the chainsaw buzzes on, and sure enough, as the kids are yelling excited screams of “Timber!” I see the top of the tree tilt, arc, and fall…right into the fork of the walnut.

Silence reigns for a minute, punctuated by the rumbling idle of the chainsaw. “That’s problematic,” says Mr. Xandra.

“Ya think?” sez I.

Again, demonstrating his prowess much like the ancient Minoan bull-leapers, Mr. Xandra darts in front of the Leaning Tower of Hardwood Death–or at least Serious Injury, and he kicks it.

The kick is indeed mighty, but the tree has a mightier girth, and as physics demonstrates, when a round object has pressure exerted on it from a single point at an oblique angle, the typical reaction of said round object is to begin rotation. The tree trunk spun majestically for a brief second, its fulcrum point carrying it off the stump and–you guessed it–right towards the Mister.

There hasn’t yet been a ballet choreographed under the title “Tree Dancing With Man With Chainsaw” but I can tell you, that it was performed that day and executed flawlessly amidst clouds of sawdust spiraling into the air with all the grace that sheer terror of Clubbing By Tree can give a human being that day. Mr. Xandra executed a leap worthy of Baryshnikov, spinning away from the bottom of the trunk, which elected to follow gravity and swing down from the new fulcrum located fifteen feet up in the air, which turned the top of the tree in the opposite direction of where it was supposed to fall, and turning the tree itself into a giant baton that twirled through the air, scraping a gouge out of the ground and crashing through the honeysuckle and other, smaller trees unfortunate enough to not be moving fast enough out of its path before hitting the ground–and bouncing twice before rolling to rest.

Picture if you will, the entire forest–birds, trees, cute little furry animals, bugs, deer, etc. all looking on in frozen astonishment for a brief moment. Picture the stunned family staring at the tree mere inches away from Mr. Xandra’s toes, and the sawdust falling out of his hair the only movement for a moment in time before the top branches of other trees wounded by the log began to drift gently down on the picture of woodland carnage.

And into that silence, that stillness, inject the following. “Daddy, do that again!”

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