The maple tree across the street had to go. The couple who lives there have been anticipating it for a few years, starting when a large branch broke off and blocked traffic.  It leaned precariously over their garage, and as much as they value hardwoods, it had to be chopped down. Another man on our road has a trimming business, and knows his way around branches fifty feet in the sky. The time was set and at eight o'clock on a Saturday four men and two trucks showed up ready to work. 

It was loud. Very loud, especially when limbs were shredded into chips. My chickens flapped to the extreme corners of their pens. I tried to calm them but my voice was no match for a diesel engine. 

The scene did not resemble the images I have of Paul Bunyan, severing the trunk at ground level with a two man blade and hollering as it teetered with a crash. Then he flung it on the back of his ox Babe, and hauled it away. Paul could fell a whole forest before breakfast. But this job was predicted to take until noon for a single tree. 

The logger went up in a bucket, hoisting a chain saw with one gloved hand while he tossed the chunks of wood to the ground with the other. He went for smaller limbs first, maybe to prevent them from catching on power lines as they flew. I worried about the men underneath, scooping up logs and clearing brush. Some had helmets but that would do little to protect them from a forty pound chunk. I guess they were careful. 

There was a squirrel that scurried frantically up and down as he worked. It wasn't until he got to a hole ten feet off the grass that he understood. She had six tiny babies whose home was disappearing in a cloud of sawdust. The logger carried the litter down in his cupped hands, and set them gently in a pile of leaves. The audience crowded in to see them, and called our children to hold a baby no bigger than a brownie.

I thought about parts of myself that have to go. Selfishness comes to mind. It is a many tentacled beast, creeping into interactions with my kids, my husband, people I work with. Even celebrities and public figures get a stab from my egocentric trunk. It would be faster just to slice it off at the base and heave it onto a passing cow, but I think that only works in tall tales. Instead I whittle the behemoth with truncated comments, and severed grousing. 

The next day I asked my neighbor how his yard felt without the tree. 

He smiled. "There is a lot more light."