Vandals. Grrr!

Tom Dunlap

Tom Dunlap

Here from the beginning
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Retired in Minneapolis
This afternoon at about 3:30 PM on a glorious sunny Saturday I’m sitting in The house and I hear rhythmic thumping. I decide to get up and check it out and look out the front window and I see a couple kids chopping on my catalpa tree. I open the door and yell at them and they take off running. Since I didn’t have shoes on, I had to Duck back in the house and slipped my shoes on. By the time I came out, they were gone. But my neighbor across the street had seen them.

We walked down the street away. She told me she knows who they are a couple of punks that vandalize

That’s a tree that I dug out of the woods when I was about the size of a well put two carpenters pencils together that’s how big it was when I got it out of the woods. I was turned into a grand and glorious tree to leave behind now I’ve got a hazard in the makingIMG_8654.webpIMG_8653.webpIMG_8655.webp
 
Tom Dunlap said:
This afternoon at about 3:30 PM on a glorious sunny Saturday I’m sitting in The house and I hear rhythmic thumping. I decide to get up and check it out and look out the front window and I see a couple kids chopping on my catalpa tree. I open the door and yell at them and they take off running. Since I didn’t have shoes on, I had to Duck back in the house and slipped my shoes on. By the time I came out, they were gone. But my neighbor across the street had seen them.

We walked down the street away. She told me she knows who they are a couple of punks that vandalize

That’s a tree that I dug out of the woods when I was about the size of a well put two carpenters pencils together that’s how big it was when I got it out of the woods. I was turned into a grand and glorious tree to leave behind now I’ve got a hazard in the makingView attachment 99972View attachment 99973View attachment 99974
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Wow !
 
That’s really brutal Tom sorry. That must’ve been really painful to witness/discover, ESPECIALLY as a tree person….. call me petty, but I would pursue this. In my eyes trees are assets/equity to a property’s value, this is no different than them chopping a hole in your siding.
 
Find them and tell them that you were growing the tree out because you are about to get an amputation and this was the stock for your peg leg. Since they ruined the grow out, you’ll have to check their blood type for compatibility.
 
Chris Schultz said:
That’s really brutal Tom sorry. That must’ve been really painful to witness/discover, ESPECIALLY as a tree person….. call me petty, but I would pursue this. In my eyes trees are assets/equity to a property’s value, this is no different than them chopping a hole in your siding.
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100%
 
The worst thing you could do, is mess with an arborist’s babies! Hope it makes it Tom. Maybe if you figure out where they live, you could bring them some seeds or seedlings and get them interested in reforesting the neighborhood?
 
obviously the damage is there and can’t be undone. But this could be an opportunity for trying out a bride graft or three.
Some research has shown vapor permeable wrap can speed callus formation, I’ve had decent luck with wrapping with burlap, and I have heard of cellophane helping too.
Shigo spoke of black plastic, aloe juice and spagmum moss.
 
If it's super fresh, could you make up a wood spacer for the notch and splice vertical bark+cambium+wood strips to grow back into the wound? Maybe carefully use a sacrificial branch from the canopy. wax and wraps and growth hormone and all that good stuff
 
After finding out where they lie from the neighbor who saw them too I went home and called 911 to file a report. The cops were a bit busy today...No Kings march downtown.

I doubt that there is much to do given the the circumstances., My neighbor said the kid has done a lot of vandalism and petty damage....he's about 14-15

What does concern me is that he starts busting windows on my vehicles. I'll talk with the cops about what I can do.

I had plans of going to No Kings today but woike up with a very bad upset stomach.If I had been at the march he would have chopped the tree down

Bridge grafting is suggested. Taking my little understanding of grafting that would happen late winter or early spring.

Judging by how fast this tree has bulked up I think it would callous
us over on its own

A protection plan is going through my head. I've got a bunch of galvanized top rails and line posts. Welding up a cage to surround the trunk would give the tree protection from a vindictive teen age vandal.

More to come
 
Sorry about your tree. Being a healthy catalpa, I think it might still stand a chance.

Honestly I bet that troubled teen is just a couple conversations with a cool patient arborist away from wanting to get into tree work. Probably just bored with no direction and no sense of purpose and hangs out on his phone all day. Teens have been doing dumb shit like this since time immortal. I remember at a big family gathering a couple of my cousins about that age went into the woods and cut down some random tree with a handsaw, and my aunt (of a hippie orientation) gave them a stern talking-to. In the middle of that sit down, a guy pulled into the driveway to deliver a couple cords of firewood. It was a little hard to keep the pressure on the kids thereafter. Not to mention her father was an arborist for decades and who knows how many countless healthy trees he cut down to keep food on the table. Unlike any of us, I am sure… ;)
flushcut said:
“Blood for blood and by the gallons” I’d be wanting my pound of flesh.
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Holy moly! Outsized your reaction may be. How about xylem for xylem? If only he was a skateboarder, which I doubt. You could cut a notch out of the board and see how he likes it. But I’m pretty sure the legal system would not look kindly upon the retribution an adult would enact upon a child for the vandalism of a tree.
 
That's a damn shame. Sorry for your lost tree. Even more, I'm sorry for the mental torture an incident like this causes. Live above it.

It's probably best that they escaped. The little idiots may have attacked you with the chopping tool they were using.

It might be time for some security cameras.
 
Stumpsprouts said:
Sorry about your tree. Being a healthy catalpa, I think it might still stand a chance.

Honestly I bet that troubled teen is just a couple conversations with a cool patient arborist away from wanting to get into tree work. Probably just bored with no direction and no sense of purpose and hangs out on his phone all day. Teens have been doing dumb shit like this since time immortal. I remember at a big family gathering a couple of my cousins about that age went into the woods and cut down some random tree with a handsaw, and my aunt (of a hippie orientation) gave them a stern talking-to. In the middle of that sit down, a guy pulled into the driveway to deliver a couple cords of firewood. It was a little hard to keep the pressure on the kids thereafter. Not to mention her father was an arborist for decades and who knows how many countless healthy trees he cut down to keep food on the table. Unlike any of us, I am sure… ;)


Holy moly! Outsized your reaction may be. How about xylem for xylem? If only he was a skateboarder, which I doubt. You could cut a notch out of the board and see how he likes it. But I’m pretty sure the legal system would not look kindly upon the retribution an adult would enact upon a child for the vandalism of a tree.
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See now you are thinking “I” would “enact” violence upon a child, preteen, or whatever the hell they are which is illegal. A pound of flesh can be gotten legally through the court system. But none of that will help the tree.
 
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