On Fri, 18 Jun 2010 17:45:11 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

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.

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.