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Call it a sign of the times. Either the economy is a wreck and people are resorting to extreme measures, or our standards these days have sunk to an anything-goes level.
Regardless, Jon Hurley, who lives on Bass Road, is a victim.
Last week, on a foggy night – on Hurley’s birthday, in fact – someone walked into his front yard and cut down a 12-foot-tall blue spruce, probably to be used as a nice Christmas tree.
Hurley has lived on the property since 1984, and years ago he planted two blue spruce trees. But one never grew and the other, which was just perfect, was hit by a car last year. So Hurley took out both the old trees and replaced them with nice, mature trees. The value of the trees was about $2,000.
Now, some jerk in the market for a Christmas tree on the cheap cut one down and hauled it away.
One option for Hurley is to contact his insurance company, but he has filed two other claims and he was told if he filed another one he’d be canceled.
“I pay $500 a year for 26 years” for insurance and the insurance company threatens to cancel him if he files a claim, Hurley groused.
He called the police, but there isn’t a lot they can do. Even if they caught the thief, Hurley’s tree is dead and gone.
The fact that someone could take a tree without being noticed is surprising.
“It gets pretty dark out here,” Hurley said, but the tree was only about 20 feet from where Hurley sat, watching television or sleeping, and he never noticed anything.
It wasn’t until last Tuesday, the morning after he believes it was taken, that Hurley noticed the tree was gone. He’d gone out that morning to give someone an estimate (he runs a company that refinishes kitchen cabinets and furniture) and when he came home and turned the corner, the tree was gone.
“They were probably hard-up,” Hurley said. “I would have bought ’em a tree” if whoever took it needed a tree that bad. It certainly would have been cheaper. “I gotta pay for it” one way or the other.
The sad part is that there are trees available.
Take Tim Kieler, who lives on Leeds Lane on the northeast side of Fort Wayne. Years ago, he planted a 6-inch seedling, a Colorado blue spruce, and it thrived. Today, it’s 30 feet tall – and it’s getting into the power lines, so a tree-trimming company hired by Indiana Michigan Power will be taking it down.
Kieler is accepting the tree’s fate, but he hates the idea of his blue spruce being run through a chipper. Does anyone need a 30-foot blue spruce tree? he asked in an e-mail.
Kieler said he offered the tree to a church, but it couldn’t use it.
Certainly someone needs a big Christmas tree – a church, a mall, a big business, Kieler said.
We spoke to a job planner for Asplundh, the company doing the tree trimming, and he had only a vague recollection of the tree, largely because jobs are planned months in advance and homeowners have to be consulted individually. The topic comes up from time to time, though.
So if you’re in the market for a really big tree, there’s at least one available – if you can find a way to haul it off.
And don’t count on Kieler to help. He’s not what you’d call a lumberjack. “I’m disabled and I’m 4-foot-2,” he says.
