The Herring
ArboristSite Lurker
Firstly, I'm new to the board so I suppose a brief introduction is in order. I'm a pretty boring guy so there is not much to say. I have a deep respect and admiration for trees. I got into tree work to escape a soul destroying desk job. I still maintain a small engineering practice on the side to help buy me cool tree toys. I get a few sideways looks for wearing two hats but more often then not I can cross sell the two things so I make do.
Secondly, I saw this particular forum and figured I would just share a dumb injury that happened to me just recently, more as an ice breaker being new to the board and certainly not for the gore factor (as previously stated Im a boring guy). This will probably strike most as being a little baby injury, but I feel that it is interesting in terms of the seemingly disproportionate cause and effect.
For those who may be unfamiar with the Honey Locust Gleditsia Triacanthos (I'd imagine they dont grow everywhere?), they are often covered in sharp thorns that in my opinion grow to resemble stag horns. Down low on the trunk they are brittle and razor sharp and on the newer growth higher up in the tree they are still sharp but a bit more flexible.
At either rate I showed up to remove one. Looking up at the menacing stag horns I knew the job was going to suck. I started sawing off as many of the thorns as I could conveniently reach from the ground with 12ft of pole saw and then proceeded to flip line up the trunk removing thorns as I went, both to avoid getting stabbed and to facilitate advancing the flip line. I'm not sure when it happened but at some point I caught a 3 inch thorn into the side of my right knee. It was so razor sharp I never even noticed it go in despite the fact that it appears to have peirced my flesh right through the tendon and to the bone. It was not until I got up the trunk quite a ways that I had even realized it was there. Being at a respectable height upon recognizing the wound I felt that the prudent thing to do was to remove the thorn and not fuss too much about it.
After getting into my zone I soon forgot about the entire incident. It wasnt until the end of the day that I began to feel intense discomfort and notice the swollen area around the puncture wound. As night approached it became progressively worse. Upon further inspection I realized that the tip of the thorn had actually broken off in my knee on the way out and had been floating around in there all day.
After having my wife dig the broken piece out of my knee and cleaning out the wound I figured I would be good to go in short order. Well I was wrong. The tendons in my knee became inflamed, and I was in quite a bit of hurt for over a week. Fast forward a month and a half and Im just now finally returning to normalcy.
I would imagine that we all spend quite a bit of time focusing on climbing and chainsaw safety. Part of climbing safety is in fact identifying and mitigating hazards in the tree. In this particular instance I appear to have under estimated the potential hazard posed by the thorns. This was compounded by my cavalier attitude towards the resulting injury. Had I come down from the tree to do a better job of removing the thorn I may have mitigated some of the later discomfort.
At face value I will certainly be much more mindful of Honey Locust thorns in the future. The more important lesson however lies in the importance of an attention to details and avoiding complacency. I had toyed with such things in the past without issue, and as a result let my guard down. This can happen to anyone, be it with tree thorns or a chainsaw. We must remain ever vigilant lest we learn the hard way.
Climb Safe.
Secondly, I saw this particular forum and figured I would just share a dumb injury that happened to me just recently, more as an ice breaker being new to the board and certainly not for the gore factor (as previously stated Im a boring guy). This will probably strike most as being a little baby injury, but I feel that it is interesting in terms of the seemingly disproportionate cause and effect.
For those who may be unfamiar with the Honey Locust Gleditsia Triacanthos (I'd imagine they dont grow everywhere?), they are often covered in sharp thorns that in my opinion grow to resemble stag horns. Down low on the trunk they are brittle and razor sharp and on the newer growth higher up in the tree they are still sharp but a bit more flexible.
At either rate I showed up to remove one. Looking up at the menacing stag horns I knew the job was going to suck. I started sawing off as many of the thorns as I could conveniently reach from the ground with 12ft of pole saw and then proceeded to flip line up the trunk removing thorns as I went, both to avoid getting stabbed and to facilitate advancing the flip line. I'm not sure when it happened but at some point I caught a 3 inch thorn into the side of my right knee. It was so razor sharp I never even noticed it go in despite the fact that it appears to have peirced my flesh right through the tendon and to the bone. It was not until I got up the trunk quite a ways that I had even realized it was there. Being at a respectable height upon recognizing the wound I felt that the prudent thing to do was to remove the thorn and not fuss too much about it.
After getting into my zone I soon forgot about the entire incident. It wasnt until the end of the day that I began to feel intense discomfort and notice the swollen area around the puncture wound. As night approached it became progressively worse. Upon further inspection I realized that the tip of the thorn had actually broken off in my knee on the way out and had been floating around in there all day.
After having my wife dig the broken piece out of my knee and cleaning out the wound I figured I would be good to go in short order. Well I was wrong. The tendons in my knee became inflamed, and I was in quite a bit of hurt for over a week. Fast forward a month and a half and Im just now finally returning to normalcy.
I would imagine that we all spend quite a bit of time focusing on climbing and chainsaw safety. Part of climbing safety is in fact identifying and mitigating hazards in the tree. In this particular instance I appear to have under estimated the potential hazard posed by the thorns. This was compounded by my cavalier attitude towards the resulting injury. Had I come down from the tree to do a better job of removing the thorn I may have mitigated some of the later discomfort.
At face value I will certainly be much more mindful of Honey Locust thorns in the future. The more important lesson however lies in the importance of an attention to details and avoiding complacency. I had toyed with such things in the past without issue, and as a result let my guard down. This can happen to anyone, be it with tree thorns or a chainsaw. We must remain ever vigilant lest we learn the hard way.
Climb Safe.
