Saturday, July 27, 2013

Bush Yanking

Up until recently (that’s foreshadowing, folks!), we had some of those stereotypical evergreen bushes lurking around our back deck. You know the kind: the classic hedge bush that’s kind of like a soft Christmas tree? Dark green but it grows those bright green shoots that festively announce to everyone that you’re taking a vacation from caring about your property? Not ringing a bell? Here’s a picture:




Erin had been talking about getting rid of them for a long time, so as someone who tries to “tune in” to things that his wife says more than once, since it must be important, I decided two weeks ago it was time to act. Though we had talked about hiring a tree company to take them out, I was too ashamed to call one, worried they might think that was a little beneath them, these being mere bushes and all.

Thus, it fell to us to do it ourselves. There was the option to painstakingly dig the entire thing out, which I figured would take months for each bush. Luckily, there was a faster, more exciting way, claimed every guy with a pickup truck we know.  Each of them encouraged me to wrap a chain around the trunk, hook the chain up to the back of my truck, and “pop those f[lat-needle bear]ers out!”  They all seemed very excited at the prospect.

When I looked into this more online, though, I saw several webpages talking about how dangerous this technique can be-- the chain can snap, hitting people or shattering your back window. Now, when the Internet, the most reckless person I know, is counseling me to beware, I tend to listen. But on about page 10 of the Google results, I started seeing testimonials/gloating from people who had tried and succeeded, or at least not been injured so badly that they were unable to post on message boards about it. I was sold. For example, one of the pages I saw mentioned that you should soak the ground beforehand; it would loosen up the soil around the roots and help the bush come out easier.  The page did caution the reader to apply tension to the chain slowly-- do NOT “pop” the bush out!

One Saturday night, we decided to try it the following evening, after our daughters went to bed. I didn’t want our girls to see mommy or daddy get their fool heads knocked in by a flying chain, or see their old man take down a load-bearing beam in the barn if the bush suddenly gave way, causing the truck to comically peel out of control.

It sounds stupid, but all day Sunday I had this nervous energy; the stupid Internet had made me pretty apprehensive about this thing, but I was also really excited to try it. I couldn’t wait to put the girls to bed and meet my destiny.

Finally, it was go time.


Keep your grill close, but your leather gloves closer (e.g., on your rear bumper)

I wrapped the chain around the trunk, hooked it to the back of truck, and had Erin stand way back to direct me to ease forward until the chain was tight, at which point I would slowly start pulling. We started the first pull and-- nothing. The back end of the truck started sliding sideways (the tires are pretty bald), further ripping up our lawn but not moving the bush even an inch. I got out to take a look. As it turned out, the chain was digging into the trunk and slowly cutting through it. The ground was a muddy soup, from all that fruitless root soaking I had done, but what did I have to show for it? Muddy jeans, that’s what, because I had to get in there and re-adjust the chain. I had pictured these bushes slipping out of the ground just as easy as can be, like pulling an old man’s teeth, but it was turning more into a horribly botched root canal, where the patient’s tooth has grown into the bone and he wakes up mid-surgery, screaming, because you're a horrible dentist.

After poking around in the soil, I decided to try to cut through some of the roots, hoping that would help. It was a painstaking operation, carefully removing dirt to expose each root before cutting through it with loppers, which, if you didn’t know, immediately voids your Lopper Warranty.



What the hell had happened? When I decided to recklessly rip these bushes out with a truck, I fancied myself an ironic cowboy, or at least a cool redneck-- in short, someone who would never use the term “fancied myself.” Instead, I ended up more like an archaeologist, and not the cool kind like Indiana Jones. This was supposed to be easier than the alternative, but here I was soaked in sweat.



Once I had cut through as many roots as I could find, we tried another cautious pull. Still no success, though now the bush was at least flinching a little bit. Luckily, I still had one more ill-advised trick up my sleeve-- the dangerous “popping” technique that everyone on the Internet had warned against! I told Erin to back up even further, told her I loved her for possibly the last time, and got a very slow running start. With a sickening lurch when the chain tightened, the bush popped right out. It wasn’t exactly like pulling an old man’s tooth; more like tying a kid’s tooth to a string attached to a doorknob and slamming it, except you tied it to the wrong tooth. In any event, the bush was out.

Bush hole. That log on the left has nothing to do with the bush; I was using it as a lever when I was trying to pry out the bush and--actually, you know what? I don’t have to explain myself to you.
We repeated the process for all of the other bushes, each seemingly having a more complex root system than the last. As anyone who's ever been around me after I've drank one or more beers knows, I worked in a tobacco field when I was a teenager, and this seemed harder than that. After the first bush, there were no other unexpected surprises, except when Erin accidentally uncapped a weird tube she found that may or may not have been connected to our septic tank.

Anyway, we didn’t die, and that’s a success in my book.