It\’s not all glamour, this storm-damage business. It seems that way on the local news, I know, what with all the flash photography and charming insurance adjusters.

But that\’s only if you get hit really bad. Like if a tree lifts up and pierces right through your living room; a toothpick holding together a big sandwich of wood and glass.

My tree broke more or less in half, but it just brushed the house on the way down, so I\’m not offered membership into the storm-victims club.

All I get is 600 pounds of recently-dead wood piled up around my home; it\’s like beavers are trying to build a dam around me.

Well, screw you, beavers. I have a chainsaw!

OK, my mom has a chainsaw. And it was broken.

But I fixed it!

And, this afternoon, after handing in my last-ever college paper (eleven pages of dead-tree, wasted), I discovered the wonders of chainsawing. I can now say, unequivocally, that the ShopVac has been replaced as my favorite all-purpose tool.

The chainsaw – that little yellow devil – does everything the ShopVac can, and more.

Let me set the scene: Sunday night, as I placidly ate a mother\’s day dinner with my girlfriend\’s family, my property was being stalked by a most sinister force: nature.

Now, I\’ve said it before, and I\’ll say it again, nature hates everything. Nature likes to break things, child-like, just because it can.

So on Sunday, nature sent a big ole T-storm (as we like to call \’em) over to my house. When it got there, around six in the evening, it bullied my oak and elm trees practically to tears. Those poor trees; gentle giants, they are.

Anyway, the big elm in the back yard (I wrongly called it an oak here) dropped a few medium size branches, knocking out the power and the phone lines, and just as importantly, a clematis bush. Gasp!

The oak in the front (this one really is an oak, trust me, I can tell) lost one of its three main forks. The piece that fell was about twice as thick as my body at its widest (the question then being, for those of you who don\’t know me; how thick am I?).

Fortunately, the only damage in the front was to some gutters and the roofing trim. No one was hurt, except a squirrel, who appeared dead and fly-ridden at the base of the big branch.

I can only speculate what her death must have been like. I think \”dramatic\” is an appropriate word. Now she rests, at peace, in a tightly knotted garbage bag in the alley.

So. Chainsaws…

Man, they are cool. I had tons of branches and logs littered around my house (evidence of 70 m.p.h. winds), and I was really worried about how I was going to get rid of them. But now I\’m sort of wishing for another storm so I\’ll have more stuff to cut.

There\’s just nothing you can\’t cut with a chainsaw. At least, I couldn\’t find anything. Big branches, little branches. Leaves!

The ShopVac was cool, sure. It could suck up a lot of stuff. But it had its limits, and the chainsaw dwarfs them. After a while using that thing, I started doing karate moves and kind of throwing the saw at its next target. Hiyah! Take that, wood!

I know, it\’s a little creepy. I even creeped myself out a little with my violent tendencies. All of the sudden, I stopped and looked at myself; my goggles were dripping with sweat, my blood was pulsing, and my clothes were drenched in sawdust.

\”This is how the Texas Chainsaw Massacre started,\” I thought. \”Jason was out there clearing up storm damage in his yard and eventually he just lost it.\”

It\’s not excellent reasoning; you could also argue that Freddy Krueger was doing arts and crafts when he went nuts and decided to get scissor-blade implants in his fingertips.

Still, it\’s pretty disturbing when you find yourself wondering how easily a chainsaw could cut through things other than wood. If you start thinking that way, it\’s time to hang that thing up in the garage and look for something else to do.

After about an hour of carving up tree carcasses, I\’d had enough whirring of the mechanized teeth. Plus, I think the neighbors were watching me through the windows with their fingers poised on the 911 speed-dial button.

And, after all, I really am more the sensitive type. I mean, most of my energy is spent on creative endeavors; writing, music, learning. As much as I like the chainsaw, I\’m not cut out for that kind of thing. I need to be doing something less physical, more imaginative, and ultimately in tune with the expression of the soul.

So I put the chainsaw away, rinsed the goggles off, and put my jeans in the washer. Reluctantly at first, I headed indoors. I knew, in the end, it would be better for everyone if I found something more relaxing, more meditative, to do.

Plus, I had some arts and crafts projects I\’d been meaning to get around to. Snip, snip.

Just for fun:

Remind me again what was scary about Freddy? Was it the fedora, or the moonwalk?

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 13th, 2004 at 1:32 am and is filed under Home-ownership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.