By Minx McCloud
When I was 10, I had a friend, Jill, whose house was on the edge of “the woods,” a deeply mystifying no-man’s land where only the bravest of boys dared to go.
We girls were certain that monsters roamed this territory, and perhaps they did, in the form of adolescent boys.
Jill loved to tell us stories about the “devil trees,” that stood behind her house, a row of tall trees that whispered and bobbed alarmingly in the slightest wind. I have no idea what kind of trees they were, and certainly my mind’s eye has been warped by time. They are, in my mind, graceful but deadly, waiting until nobody is looking to swoop down their branches and grab unsuspecting children, and … what?
The imagination sufficed to fill in the gory details as to whether the children were torn asunder, eaten, or absorbed into the haunted tree. I’m sure some of this fantasy was born from the image of the apple-throwing trees in “The Wizard of Oz,” but Jill’s version, oft repeated when storm clouds darkened the summer skies, was much scarier.
Now I am an adult and I have my own version of “devil trees,” from a homeowner’s view. My trees are four enormous evergreens that line my neighbor’s yard. These trees, planted more than 70 years ago as a windbreak, have morphed into four-story tall monsters that loom over my swimming pool, cutting out the sunlight and dumping all sorts of debris into it.
I have alternately cursed and blessed these trees. In cooler summer weather, they block the sunlight that would warm the pool enough for us to swim comfortably. However, in the dead of the hottest summer, they also shade the pool and keep it cooler than those of our neighbors.
The woman who lives down the street complains that her pool (unshaded) gets so warm during the summer that you could cook a lobster in it.
I wouldn’t mind it if these trees were healthy, but they are starting to die, and their needles run the gamut from green to brown to gone. Where do they go? Into my pool if the breeze is right, along with dead bugs, remnants of bird’s nests, and on one dark day, the skeleton of a bat.
Last week, a local tree-removal company showed up, and my initial annoyance at being awakened by their loud saws turned to joy as I saw that my neighbor’s son had finally decided to remove two of the devil trees.
Not only that, he informed me, but he was also having all the overhanging branches removed from my yard at his expense. He wanted to thank me for my concern over his elderly mother in the years before her death.
I used to take in her garbage pails after the sanitation guys came and threw them in the street. She was afraid they would be stolen or run over by some careless driver if they were not brought back onto the porch immediately.
If she needed something from the store, I got it for her, even though I sometimes had to return to the store two or three times before I got exactly what she wanted.
Although she was a bit eccentric, I never minded, because I would want someone to do this for me if my parent was incapacitated. Now, the gods (and her son) were rewarding me. It seemed too good to be true. It’s karma. You sow, and then you reap.
I went outside to watch the show. Nothing beats watching virile men cutting down trees. These guys were great! When one well-built guy actually swung from branch to branch from a rope (not unlike Tarzan), I almost swooned. Naturally I did not mention this to Jim.
The last time Jim and I hired a tree company, they were incompetent boobs and scared me to death by hoisting up a metal ladder in the midst of a lightning storm. I begged them to stop and come back another day, but nobody spoke English.
I checked my insurance policy, rechecked their contract, which said they were insured and bonded, and then huddled in my living room, waiting for the loud crack that would signal the presence of a sizzling corpse in my maple tree. It didn’t happen, but I’ve been wary of tree removal services ever since.
These guys were great though, and I spent a lovely morning watching them, chatting to my neighbor, and munching on popcorn. I also yelled “Timber!” when a branch cracked and fell (a joke which I’m sure they’ve never heard before). They were very nice though, and treated me like they would treat a slightly batty aunt who has 27 cats and reads tea leaves.
I love trees and I hate to destroy them, but let’s face it, these two trees were dead, dead, dead. My neighbor’s son watched ruefully.
”My father must be turning over in his grave,” he said. “He planted those trees and he loved them.”
I, on the other hand, with no such sentimentality, was concentrating hard, trying to bend him to my will.
”Cut down the other two,” my mind chanted. “The other two are evil and will eventually crash down on your house (or worse yet, my pool).”
Apparently, he is immune to my nonverbal attempt at hypnotism, because the other two trees remain, albeit trimmed (thank heavens).
The chain-link fence that separates our yards is covered with so many bushes, you wouldn’t even know there’s a fence in there. It forms an impenetrable barrier between our yards, but now that there are so many “junk bushes” in there, it’s become unsightly, and it’s totally out of control.
My neighbor’s son looked at them critically. “Wow, those bushes are getting so tall, they’re actually tangling around the branches of the evergreens. Are those yours or mine?”
They’re ours, unfortunately. I felt honor-bound to tell the truth, and added, “Yeah, well as soon as they shrivel for the winter, we’re getting a landscaping company to remove them, at our expense, of course.”
And so begins a new headache.
Minx McCloud is a freelance writer who writes about life in New Jersey. She can be reached at [email protected].

