I recently took down a tree at my Hatboro home. I didn't do it alone however, I enlisted the help of two friends I met on the job as an Arborist Representative for Giroud Tree and Lawn Care.

The large Wild Cherry was not only in the location I desired for my future shed, it was in poor condition and had been dropping branches.

In four hours, we had everything on the ground. My friends' work was over but I'd be busy for the next month cutting and stacking the fresh supply of fire wood. One question we all had, but couldn't answer was why the bottom 6 feet of trunk had a vertical split and the center of the trunk had a large core of rotten wood!

Tonight, as I finished splitting the last section of a 3 ft diameter log, I saw the answer. A rusty piece of wire was buried deep inside the trunk. It had probably been tied around the tree when the house was first built. When the tree was just a 10 inch diameter sapling in the late 50's. Unfortunately, the orriginal owners never removed the wire.

The take home message of my experience is to never stop getting the word out to everyone I meet. "Don't wrap objects around trees."