Acts of God

Today I witnessed an Act of God.

The humongous 80-feet-tall cottonwood tree that spent almost 100 years in front of my neighbor's house, split at the base in two after a severe thunderstorm struck our area this afternoon.

My husband was at work and I was in the kitchen getting ready to prepare some tembleque, a coconut pudding-style Puerto Rican dessert for him. I was watching my favorite TV meteorologist as he said that the storm had toppled large trees north of here.

Earlier in the afternoon I'd seen a posse of city officials milling around the tree, which has been a topic of conversation in this neighborhood since we moved in several years ago. The neighbors had told us they would have it removed later this year at a cost of nearly $8,000.

The mayor, concerned that the tree had become a public nuisance, came by and told the neighbors he wanted it down today. But they couldn't find any tree-cutting crew with a 70-feet-tall crane so they called in a crew from Toledo and scheduled the cutting down for tomorrow.

"If there's a day when that cottonwood is coming down, it's today," I thought wrily, as I poured the coconut milk into the measuring cup.

That was as far as I got with the tembleque. At that very moment, nature decided to oblige the mayor.


Almost at the very moment that my bruja thought was over, I heard a ripping sound that suggested the earth itself was coming undone at the seams. I rushed to the living room and saw a large green shadow obscure the light and immediately realized that my premonition was coming true: the cottonwood WAS coming down right then and there.

"Please not the house, not the house," I prayed quickly as I wondered what I would do if there was any damage to our home. My husband and I had discussed the possibility of this tree coming down on our property many times, and he had conjectured that our beautiful maple tree in front would save our house. Unfortunately for our maple, but fortunately for the house, he was right.

This is now the view from our front porch. TV and newspaper reporters swarmed the area, as did many curious people who came and parked and theorized and took pictures. I was even interviewed by a TV reporter from the same news program I was watching when all hell literally broke loose.

A city crew came in and cleared the street but the front of our house will likely remain a pile of tree debris until tomorrow afternoon. By about 9 or 10 p.m., the crew from Toledo showed up to take down the remaining standing tree and the show was worthy of a TV program.

The lone guy who cut down the tallest branches was taken up on a mechanical bucket, like the ones the electric company workers use, and then tied himself to the branch. He then rappelled down the tree back to his bucket once he'd secured the branch with rope so the crane could lift it and bring it down to the tree chipper on the ground once Bucket Man had sawed them off. Surely that guy must be an Xtreme athlete when he's not working!

We went to bed past 12:30 a.m. and we could still hear the loud whine of the saw and the mulcher grinding out there. The neighbor on the other side of my neighbor did well to leave her home and spend the night with friends.

As for us, as I told the TV reporter, we have a saying in Puerto Rico: De los males, el menos. Of all evils, this was the lesser one. There was no loss of property or life.

And while I hope my lovely maple tree isn't so damaged that it must be cut down, it was definitely a heroic tree and saved the day for all of us.