Swamp Logger

Sunday afternoon. Just left of the standing cottonwood is a busy canal entrance to West Okoboji. The storm dropped another tree directly across the canal, bringing boat traffic to a halt.

Two neighborhood guys took a look and talked it over. They concluded that it would be a nice libertarian thing to do to cut it up and haul it out, saving days or weeks of bureaucratic wrangling about whose responsibility it was.

Assembling a chain saw,  a small  I/O runabout, and a length of  3/4-inch nylon, they  turned to.

Two or three hours later the tree was as you see it in the top photo (dragged out by hand over the canal sea wall ) and bottom shot -- towed trough the canal to a place where the pair could get a line on it from the pickup to drag the big stem out.

Some tourist folks were helpful from one side of the canal. On the other an  apparently healthy middle-age fellow followed the action sporadically from the patio of his impressive lake home (which had become less impressive due to the tree in his adjacent waters.)  His assistance consisted of occasionally turning from his newspaper to frown importantly and make small gestures of disapproval when some move of the two men in the water struck him as unwise. This is a fellow who should pray nightly that he never needs the help of his neighbors.

After the last of the cottonwood was high and dry, one of the perps allowed as how even without alligators, this wasn't  something he'd care to do for a living.