What crawls out when you're cutting?

[sawn_penn]

What crawls out of wood when you're cutting?

Around here, these big spiders always appear when cutting hardwoods. I generally spot them at about eye level a foot from my face and they scare the crap out of me each time, depite knowing that they are harmless.

We get snakes too, but the generally take off long before you see them. Only when it's cold can you suprise them.

 

[carvinmark]

what crawls out when your cutting

Man, that would scare the crap out of me to see that a foot from my face.I usually only have small worms. Never ran across a spider that big.

 

[PetrolHead]

Yes mate, I wasn't cutting at the time but I made the mistake of pulling a big chunk of paperbark of a tree. Absolutely crawling with what looked like Huntsman spiders, although I can't be sure because I ran like hell. Was years ago but I never forgot the lesson.

 

[oldsaw]

Somewhere I have a very poor picture of a frog that poked its head out of a log while the bar was passing a couple of inches from his backside.

 

[bama]

Black Widow's

When I used to cut in slash piles in the Southern Black Hills of South Dakota(Hot Springs and Edgemont), I would see the occasional Black Widow spider. Not very big, but I am told the sting is something you remember for a long time. They also seemed to enjoy my garage.


The occasional rattlesnake or bull snake were in the piles also, but as the saw got closer, they would leave, especially if it was in the middle of the day. I just tried to make a lot of noise and vibrations to scare the buggers away.

 

[MikeInParadise]

Got the crap scarred out of me last fall

as I was brushing and I was just starting a cut when a rabbit that was about 2 feet from me under a brush darted and I just wasn't expecting it.

Also I was fueling up the chainsaw and this very tiny little baby field mouse jumped up on my boot, looked up at me, realized that I wasn't his momma and then carried on about his way!

 

[West Texas]

Had a flying squirrel jump out of one that was on its way down. Smart squirrel. Yellow Jackets, they hurt. Termites, ants, mice, spiders, etc. As I cut mostly dead oak trees there are a lot of things that make their home there.

 

[NorthWoods]

Was bucking some old logs to throw on a brush pile for burning. Had just finished a cut when 2 bats flew out of a hollow in the log, one from each side of the cutter bar towards my head (must have cut right between where they were hanging in the hollow). Their radar must have finally kicked in as they veared off when they were a foot or so from my face.

Had to let the saw idle a bit to catch a few deep breaths and to check the old BVDs for "involuntarily induced pollution".

Dave

 

[McC]

I was almost finished cutting a small blowdown, about 3ft from the base when I noticed a very small whitetail fawn curled up in the hole the roots left. I stopped right away, showed my young daughter, then we left. Not scary, but very cool. The fawn had put up with a lot of noise and vibration, and never moved.
Scott

 

[manual]

I was cutting an old oak you know the hollow type.
When it hit the ground. alot of mice ran off. No big deal.
Well after blocking the wood and splitting it. then throwing it in the truck.
I got home and the little woman was helping me by throwing it to me until
a mouse appeared right in frount of her face.
Needless to say I finished the job myself. What a warm feeling on a cold day.

 

[Gark]

This isn't what happened while cutting, but what occurred later. Some of the termite-riddled deadfall or standing bug-infested trees are too 'punky' to keep for indoor winter burning, so we throw the split sticks onto neighbor Dave's woodpile for evening fire-ring parties. When tossed onto the outdoor fire, a few really hole-riddled logs exploded a million black ants out of the wood into the fire. They were POURING out of the wood by the millions and went right into the fire. Amazing. Woke up some sleeping neighbors, they say.