What are some of things that have attacked you in a tree?

[DLCRL]

Have you almost died or been seriously injured by wildlife, including insects and reptiles, or do you know someone who has? I know I sound like a law firm, LOL, but I thought I might get interesting, possibly cautionary and comedic stories.

 

[pro94lt]

Never been bitten but ran out a lot of squirrels opossums, and some bats. Don't like bats. I cut open a nest of them and they flogged me for 10 seconds or so

 

[RVALUE]

Coons, possums, squirrels, wasps, hornets, bees, and unhappy homeowners. (from the ground, lol)

 

[DLCRL]

Never been bitten but ran out a lot of squirrels opossums, and some bats. Don't like bats. I cut open a nest of them and they flogged me for 10 seconds or so

Bats are bad one the biggest carriers of rabies.

 

[pro94lt]

Was not fun. It was a heavy piece and they must have scared the ground man as well he didn't let it run at all sent me banging on the stem with bats all around me...

 

[DLCRL]

Coons, possums, squirrels, wasps, hornets, bees, and unhappy homeowners. (from the ground, lol)

I've heard of that homeowner thing before, some of the first guys I met in this industry told me a story of a woman coming out and grabbing the climbers line hanging from it and yelling I can't breathe because he was cutting a neighborhood tree, these were union guys for Excel energy.

 

[mckeetree]

This is hard to believe but the guy told it for the truth and this was not a bullchitty type guy. A climber that worked for us one summer a few years ago said he climbed a big hackberry in Corsicana, Texas to get part of an old TV antennae out of it that the tree had grown around. He said this was a huge tree for a hackberry. Anyway, after ten minutes or so something above him tries to climb down over his back and got tangled up in his rope and lanyard. It was some Mexican that was in the tree for unknown reasons. And to make matters worse, the Mexican dude had a gallon jug of water up there with him and it fell from somewhere up there about three seconds after the initial contact and hit the guy in the top of the head. He said it scared him to death. He thought a wild cat had ahold of him. He told us this story after we informed him we saw some small animal in a tree he was about to climb. He replied he was ready for ANYTHING in a tree and told about that incident.

 

[RVALUE]

Our Avocado pickers will find a bear in the tree occassionally. It is very expensive. The bear cuts a strait path one direction without regard to vegetation. The picker takes an opposite path, with a brown trail, without regard to vegetation.






That person has never gone back to picking in the same day.......

 

[Fubar]

This is hard to believe but the guy told it for the truth and this was not a bullchitty type guy. A climber that worked for us one summer a few years ago said he climbed a big hackberry in Corsicana, Texas to get part of an old TV antennae out of it that the tree had grown around. He said this was a huge tree for a hackberry. Anyway, after ten minutes or so something above him tries to climb down over his back and got tangled up in his rope and lanyard. It was some Mexican that was in the tree for unknown reasons. And to make matters worse, the Mexican dude had a gallon jug of water up there with him and it fell from somewhere up there about three seconds after the initial contact and hit the guy in the top of the head. He said it scared him to death. He thought a wild cat had ahold of him. He told us this story after we informed him we saw some small animal in a tree he was about to climb. He replied he was ready for ANYTHING in a tree and told about that incident.

LOL , maybe the Mexican in the hackberry tree had just watched tremors and was afraid the grabiods might get him ?

 

[Single_Shooter]

This past year one of my climbers was about 10 feet off the ground in a very thick vegetative tree partially covered in ivy and was chatting with me as he ascended when I told him to stay away from the possum...he asks what possum...I reply...the one you are about to step on. He didn't even look....he hit his friction knot and was on the ground nearly landing on me.
Second incident was a squirrel that decided that jumping was not an option....it landed square on the back of the climber as it tried to make it's way out of the tree. Climber screamed like a little girl and swatted wildly which made him lose his grip on the tree so there he was swinging on the end of a rope with a now terrified squirrel attached with claws to his back for about 5 seconds before leaping to branch. The climber swears it was 5 minutes. The rest of the day went very slowly after that.

Lastly....(FROM A FELLOW TREE GUY I WORK WITH) climber drops the first limb out of a tree. It makes a divot in the yard....and up comes a swarm of hornets out of a hole next to the divot. They all ran for the trucks. Apparently the climber ended up in the hospital with dozens of stings and 3 of the groundies were pretty beat up as well. he said they had a bee guy come out and he dug a hornet nest a little larger than a basketball out of the ground.

 

[Greenthorn]

Ground hornets or wasps, 1st time happened over 200 stings or welps on me, 2nd time 30 years later about 15 stings from them. That first time was a doozie, not kidding one bit......2 other people were knocking the bees off of me and they each got about 50 stings. Them phucking ground hornets are relentless. We fire bombed that first nest, it was 4 feet by 3 feet in size. Both times they were in the base or at the base of the tree and attacked when I was felling.

 

[Greenthorn]

The best story I have, although not attacked, was a river spider. I was cabeling sunken logs out of the Wabash river when this spider ran over the top of my head....swear that basturd was 20 inches long. That was also about 35 years ago and I still remember it like it was yesterday.

I don't even want to get started on the fire ants when I lived in OK,,,,them there basturds are also relentless, and yes they hurt just as bad or worse than bee stings....specially when you get them on the nutsack!

 

[TaoTreeClimber]

A couple months a go we had a spun out tweaker neighbor freak out and shot at me in the bucket with a BB gun. The home owner kinda hinted that the guy was unstable. But when he came out with the BB gun he called the police. We had to sit around for a couple hours while the cops took statements from everyone. Silly tweakers. Shooting at me with a Daisy Red Rider BB gun. If 10,000 pissed off hadji's armed with AK-47 and RPG couldnt kill me Im not really all that concerned with a meth head who has been awake for 5 days and thinks our trucks are alien invaders.

 

[Oldmaple]

Didn't get attacked but years ago worked a job where the sheriff was stationed in front of the neighbors house (tree was partly hanging over his house). Neighbor was known to be "off-kilter" so to speak. Only heard the sheriff one time telling the neighbor to go back in the house. A motivated crew on that job, we just wanted to get out of there.

 

[Sagetown]

My Squirrel dog treed on an oak tree. Hole was way up the main trunk. I finally, hugging the tree, inched my way up in front of the hole, and when I shifted to look inside, honey bees swarmed me. Bout broke my neck. Dumb dog.

 

[treesmith]

One of the boys at work was using an srt system to access a large tree, nobody knew there was a beehive till he started getting stung halfway up. Using srt he had to go all the way to his anchor point and change over to come down ddrt. At the top his croll jammed and he struggled to remove it, all the time being stung in the face, he didn't panic, just zoned out and did what he had to do.
He came down with stings up his nose, in his eyelids, ears and all over his face, had he panicked and started swatting the bees he would have been quite literally ****ed.

 

[CanopyGorilla]

I started this silver maple removal. I was in a bucket and swung low to cut a big limb first. I was probably 5 feet from the ground. I cut the limb and start getting LIT UP by yellow jackets. I figured I was so close to the ground my best bet would just be to jump and run for it. I forgot I was attached to the bucket with my fall arrest harness...,.. My feet were hanging maybe 4 inches from solid ground kicking and getting even more LIT UP. I climbed the lanyard and unhooked fairly quick but still unpleasant.

 

[Sagetown]

I started this silver maple removal. I was in a bucket and swung low to cut a big limb first. I was probably 5 feet from the ground. I cut the limb and start getting LIT UP by yellow jackets. I figured I was so close to the ground my best bet would just be to jump and run for it. I forgot I was attached to the bucket with my fall arrest harness...,.. My feet were hanging maybe 4 inches from solid ground kicking and getting even more LIT UP. I climbed the lanyard and unhooked fairly quick but still unpleasant.

 

[mr simpel]

Don't have any tree experience but climbed for the telephone company. The critters I disliked the most were bats. Had a few close calls because of them. Then snakes and bees were also a pleasant surprise. Last are the ants and squirrels. They all made it interesting

 

[Seedling345]

I watched a flying squirrel tear up my Forman when I was still learning to climb from that day I always test a hollow with a little retractable pointer. Get above the hollow stick it in and stir for a few seconds botta bing botta boom. But my least favorite by far are the wolfies I find up there monster wolf spiders. They get a piece of my zubat every time I've seen wolfie bites cause swelling so bad they had to cut it to release pressure


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