The Pine Beast Is Defeated

Up until this past week, we have had the privilege of having the ugliest pine tree in existence in our backyard. Since we moved in it has been half dead and, if you look closely at the picture, you can see that all of the branches are on the left side of the tree. We have been wanting to get rid of it since day one! (This picture doesn't really do it justice.) Well, this week we finally did it! Pine Beast (as I've come to call it) met his demise. Although he didn't go down without a fight!
First, we started by trying to chop it down. We borrowed an ax from Matt's parents to do the job. Unfortunately the ax was so dull that it was like trying to cut through the trunk with a butter knife!
It worked for a while, but it took a lot of effort! Then, Pine Beast took his first jab and broke the handle of the ax right before we finished the trunk. We had to look at this in our backyard for the next couple days because we couldn't finish the job right away:
Then, we rented a chainsaw from Home Depot (in Lansing, which comes into play later). I picked it up then went and got Matt from work. We only had four hours so we had to work fast! Matt went back there and chopped one limb off with no problem. Then he started on the bigger limbs that Pine Beast was leaning on and it stopped working. After about an hour and several phone calls I had to drive back out to Home Depot (remember that gas is $4/gallon at this point) and exchange it for a new one.

Pine Beast - 2, Boardmans - 0

I got back with the new chainsaw and Matt went right to work. We're making really good progress now, Matt's cutting through everything left and right while I'm clearing the yard and organizing the wood. All of a sudden, with less than 10 branches to finish cutting into smaller pieces, the chain on the chainsaw falls off! Matt tried to get it back on but the bolt that he needed to loosen was so tight that the only thing he was doing was stripping it! After a good 20 minutes of working with that we were running short on our time and just needed to take the thing back. Thank goodness I bought the $2.50 insurance in case anything went wrong because Pine Beast made sure that it did!

This is what we were able to get done. Pine Beast looks a lot better in this picture and I know we'll get plenty of campfires and countless s'mores out of him. We bested you in the end, Beast!