The Phantom Lopper

First, there was the mystery of the bagel throwing maniac in our neighborhood (it's still happening, by the way)...........now this.

Early this fall, as I left at 6:45 am to drive my kids to school (thank you, school levy failure), I noticed a small branch from our rose of sharon tree lying in the middle of the sidewalk. When I got home, I picked it up to throw it away and noticed that it wasn't a branch that had merely snapped off the tree. No, this was a clean cut. I thought that was mighty strange, so I looked down at my neighbors on both sides, and sure enough, one or two branches were lying on the sidewalk in front of their houses too. I couldn't help myself, I had to go pick up the branches to check for signs of cutting. Yup, there they were.

Using my novice investigative skills, I deduced that the cutting took place between 8 pm (when I pulled in the driveway the previous night, and I would have noticed the branch there) and 6:45 am. I decided to take a walk around the neighborhood and found more branches on sidewalks and tree lawns on our street and a few side streets off of our street. Someone had been a busy beaver overnight!

I mentioned this to my neighbors and they said, "Oh, the city probably came through here and trimmed the trees." Um, I don't think so. 1)The city wouldn't be spending the money to trim trees on our property; 2)Why would they do it in the dark?; 3)We'd have heard the noise if a city truck was on our street, believe me.

A few days later, I took a different route from my normal walking path and discovered more branches on more sidewalks. Our phantom lopper had struck again! On the one hand, I think it's pretty ballsy to cut down branches from someone else's trees, but I'm also grateful because there was one tree in particular that was difficult to get around in the neighborhood, and now, I have a clear path.