Animals in trees! Any run-ins worth telling about!

[ozzy42]

Oh down here in the sub tropics of southern florida,I have seen so many critters that i had just as well NOT have seen.And yes they allways seem to pop out at you at head height.

In hardwoods snakes,squirels,opossums[the freakiest I think]escaped or released iguannas,and tropical birds of all kinds.

In palms;all the above plus rats ,and mice,roaches as big as your thumb,bull ants,fire ants,and if that is not enough fun,of course you run in to the occasional nest of hornets,or yellow jackets.

Allways something interesting.

 

[yooper]

I like critters, if I ain't going to eat them, usually i wont kill them. one time doing ROW work I was doing a take down way south of where I live and ran into an opossum nest with a slew of little ones in it. I told the worker on the ground to find me something to put them in....I didnt even know what they where, they where kinda cute tho. well tossed em in a bucket and sent em down. as soon as the o'll man who owned the property seen em he started to toss em over a bridge where we where working next to. screaming and hollering"thees damm things eat all of the bird eggs around here" as he tossed them as hard as as he could one by one into the water! hell If I would have known I would have raised them critters my self to save them.....fattened up a bit more i bet they would be good on the grill.

 

[TreeTopKid]

.....fattened up a bit more i bet they would be good on the grill.

Thats what I was talking about what do they taste like? I'd probably try one out of the woods but I'm forever fishing out trapped urban Opossums from garbage cans. they eat any rotten old crap. That can't be good. You are what you eat LOL.

 

[corsair4360]

Turkey's

I was cruising timber in Western Alabama almost in Mississippi near Meridian years ago. By myself, running a cruise line through mixed pine and oak, with a big wolf oak tree just uphill from the line. I got within about 50 feet and the turkey was apparently resting in the tree took off with a huge ruckus of flapping wings, and noise. About scared the crap out of me. It was very quiet overcast day, and not much noise before or after that.

The one thing I hated was crossing swamps on other lands where there was water we had to walk through, always wondered when the 'gator was going to show up. Never had one do it, but the stories are pretty funny about that.

We were on near the Tombigbee River about 60 miles north of Mobile once and we smelled a still, the old sour mash odor. That was the sure fire way to get everyone out of the woods. Those guys did not take kindly to anyone being near their operation. Standing rule was to high tail it out of the woods if we smelled that and we wanted no part of that timber for logging.

 

[M.Green - SVTS]

I was told yesterday by a friend of mine that him and 4 of his buddies working at Lucas got chased by a giant squirrel on foot. They said the damn thing was on roids.

 

[ozzy42]

I was told yesterday by a friend of mine that him and 4 of his buddies working at Lucas got chased by a giant squirrel on foot. They said the damn thing was on roids.

A coworker freind of mine got chased out of a palm tree a long time ago .
He got too close to the nest with babies in it ,and momma squirrel didn't care for that very much.
Never saw a man climb down a latter so fast before LOL.
After laughing my ass off at him for ten minutes or so ,he asked me to finish the tree.I told him ,"hell no ,you pissed her off, you finish it"
Yes ,Momma can get very aggitated sometimes.

 

[Raymond]

snakes, squirrels, raccoons, opossums, bees or cats which should I talk about?

Well, let's talk snakes, I was climbing a large poplar early one morning and a large black snake decided to come down (we were 30 feet up) so I yelled for a pruner pole to knock him off the tree and he ended up falling on me so I screamed like a girl and threw him off me, another time I was climbing a maple that had been topped a 100 times over the years (under the 3 phrase) and you know how they get the hollows where the old cuts are, well one of the holes had a 2 ft copper head snake coiled up in it and it was staring at me and I had no where to go so I used my handsaw to grab it and toss it out and I thought it was all over, well, it wasn't, my foreman killed it and tied the damn thing to my rope and as I was making a B-line for the ground the thing came up between my legs and you guessed it, I screamed like a girl......


disclaimer: I didn't really scream like a girl, I'm just being funny, no really I am.

Dude I about spit coffee all over the keyboard here.

 

[Raymond]

I've found a snake or two and many squirrels one ran down I put my face into the tree and he ran down my head, neck and stopped in the middle of my back for a few seconds.

But the worst I've dealt with is pissed off BEE'S!!!! Man I hate the bee's!

 

[00chris85]

Bees

the worst one we have gotten into was a big hollow willow. it was 35 40 ft tall 4 ft DBH. it had hydro in it, so took the bucket to it and limbed what we had to and then went to flop the 20 ft stem over. the entire time we where doing this a few bees had been buzzin around. nothing major. as soon as the log hit the ground it was a different story.
if you had ever seen someone run as fast as we did that day you swear you where watching the Olympics.
so we are hiding in the customers house at this point trying to get a grasp on things when we realize that we are missing a guy. one of our ground guys (older french men) ,to scared to move, has 3 smokes in his mouth and feverishly blowing smoke around him while tucking his pants into his socks and keeping his hands in his pockets.
the bees settle down later in the night and disappear....so we loaded the log and fire wood and got the hell out of there.
in the moring we wake up to find that the log we brought home had the queen in a and the bees started building a nest or the side of our trailer. after calling a couple of local bee keepers we get one to come out and investigate.
the only way we got rid of them was to figure out which log had the queen in it and burn it. we stood the log up in the middle of the yard dumped gas down it and let 'er burn. every bee that was in the area went in to "save the hive" they didn't win.
to make this story even better in was the hottest day of the year and we where all wearing our coverall and these nets over our heads....

all that just for a willow

 

[logantree]

Cat Rescue

I got a call one Sunday night around 23:00. This guy said he had a cat in a tree that had been there for 3 or 4 days, and they were afraid it was going to freeze that night. We had about 6 inches of snow on the ground and it was still snowing like crazy. It was already about 18 deg. F. I told him I would have to try and find someone to come with me, and it would be a $300.00 minimum, and he said ok! I couldn't believe they were going to pay $300 bucks just to rescue this cat, but anyway. It took us 1.5 hours to go 15 miles. We had to hike at the VERY least half a mile up a hill in about 8 inches of snow before we found the cat. It was about 35 feet up a locust tree. I climbed up to it and made sure it wasn't going to attack me, then pulled a pet carrier up and shoved the cat in it. They paid me $300 bucks. It took me until 03:00 to get home, and I just about got my F250 stuck in a 5 foot snow drift. Fun stuff...