Digging up tree butts is expensive, especially when you just sold a liver (jokes on them!) to have the rest of the tree felled. No one saves money in the hopes of one day removing a dead oak from the backyard. Maybe people with lumberjack fetishes.
“Another $100 and we’ll have enough to hack down the Beech Tree! I’m getting hot just THINKING about it! Want to trim the bushes right now?”
I just read an article about 4000 men who dress up like My Pretty Pony calling themselves “Bronies,” so a lumberjack fetish doesn’t seem so odd now, does it?
Think of the strangest, most impossibly ridiculous hobby you can imagine. Something NO ONE would do.
Yep, someone does that.
Watching men swing around on ropes and lop limbs with chainsaws is exciting in an “America’s Got Talent” sort of way, but tickets to Cirque du Soleil are more affordable. And no matter how I begged, the tree guys refused to don the spandex lion costumes I’d sewn for them. Tree guys are so stuck up. They think they’re SO much better than the lawn guys in the cheetah suits.
Mike and I were bitter about the costs. The stump stayed. I planned to use it as a podium for some sort of giant lawn gnome, maybe one posing like “The Thinker,” to make it look like we left the stump on purpose, but you’d be surprised how hard it is to find a “Thinker” Gnome.
Instead, a year later, we had a vibrant community of termites living in the rotting tree stump we were too cheap to excavate. When the exterminator visited, we had him pump the stump full of death.
The termites were perched in front of their little termite TVs, watching “Ax Men,” (except they call it “House Hunters”), and then:
“Agnes, do you smell something? … Agnes?”
Dead.
Sometimes I imagine the crumbling stump resembles an abandoned antebellum mansion forgotten somewhere in the swampy crevices of the deep south. Covered in Spanish moss, the hallways echo with the voices of the dead. Dust covers the portraits. Sheets draped over divans flutter with delight as the rare breeze slips through a broken window panes. The bust of Grandpa “Pappy” Thibodaux stares forlornly at the harp on the opposite side of the ballroom, its music silenced forever…
But mostly I think about a young termite couple stumbling upon this once bustling fortress, amazed at their good fortune.
“Can you believe our luck, Honey? We have the whole place to ourselves! Now THIS is a place we can start a family! Hm. We’ll have do something about that odor though. Smell that? Honey? Do you smell that… Honey? HONEY? Noooo!”
*gag* *cough*
The end.
APPENDED:
Just changed my mind. I want a gnome like Munch’s “The Scream”
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we have a grouncy, contentious, alcoholic ctermite couple living on our back porch. I’ve tried several interventions. this won’t end well.
You try to talk to them but the Scotch! Always the Scotch! What is it with termites and Scotch?? Makes them CRAZY.
Bwahahaha! This was excellent. Thanks for the laugh. Also, thanks for the reminder to never sit on stumps. Ever.
We have another stump that is actually a pretty good seat… but give it time.
Nice. You know I might just have to write a piece about termite realtors sometime. Hey, wait that’s my idea! (cue wrestling sounds)
Yep, every time I’m notified of new blog by you I quickly publish whatever I have queued for fear you beat me to it.. 🙂
And you just know if that termite couple hadn’t found the insect poison to complain about then they would have been complaining about the stump not being close enough to downtown or something. Home shoppers are so picky.
That is really why we had it nuked. When the other termites were there it was “The sink is clogged, the AC is out, the dishwasher makes a funny noise…” Sucks being landlords.
I’ve chosen “yard statue pedestal” so many times over stump grinding. “Stump grinding” sounds extremely dirty, too.
Yeah, this one conveniently disintegrated but I’m thinking for the other one we have I need to go find something really horrific.
Two things:
1. Thank you for making me feel like crap about killing termintes
2. Only 6 bathrooms with 16 bedrooms. Was that stump a boarding house from Little House on the Prarie?
Ha! See that was the trick – Mr. and Mrs though they were getting a deal because of the strange bedroom to bathroom ratio, when in reality, it was the fact that place was riddled with deadly toxins.
FYI I just started following you on twitter and they suggested you’re like Danny Devito.
Dude… I am laughing hysterically here… did you just pull that out of your ass? If so, you’re a genius, if not I am somewhere between flattered and feeling like I really need to wear more makeup…
Great article .. Thanks for sharing, Great article .. Thanks for sharing
Ha, this post was great, and just what I needed as I began to grow frustrated with the tree stumps I have yet to deal with in our backyard.