Gargantuan Pile of Dead Plant Parts

It’s almost silly to use a 7,000-pound truck to haul a bunch of branches that probably weighs less than a week’s worth of groceries for a family of one (if you don’t include the beer). But live oak is the hardest wood west of the Mississippi, and simply won’t compress into a neat little bundle. Wood this dry is dangerous to have around during wildfire season, which seems to be just about year-round anymore.

A couple of live oak trees collapsed from thirst and fell into other trees near Karla’s music studio. They are way too close for comfort, so today I started to part them out and haul them off to our Gargantuan Pile of Dead Plant Parts far from the house. We set fire to the Gargantuan Pile a few years ago and watched in horror as the flames shot into the sky and threatened high-flying commercial aircraft! Since then we’ve kept piling on more deadwood and wondering what to do with the Pile. It provides a fine home for pack rats and rabbits, and an occasional covey of quail will scurry in to escape the alligators. The Pile slowly shrinks under the weight of its Gargantuan-ness, but it would be nice if it simply disappeared.

“Get a shredder, dummy!” I can hear some of you yelling. But to handle such voluminous timber, it would have to be a truly industrial-sized shredder, something not normally available to mere civilians. Not only that, occasionally you have to toss in a human just to keep the innards lubricated. In other words, they’re dangerous. I’d rather threaten the occasional Boeing 747 full of innocent carefree vacationers with a colossal blaze instead, then buy carbon credits to atone for the pollution.