I yank the door handle but the thing barely moves. My arm nearly rips off it’s so heavy.
“No worries, just keep drilling,” I see myself telling the dentist as my gnarled shoulder stump spurts human juice into his face.
I probably would have remembered how heavy the door was if I wasn’t so late. What is it about the dentist that keeps me away until the last possible second?
Oh, that’s right. Nobody wants to spend money on their teeth.
“James, wtf do dentists have to do with trees? You’re an arborist and this is a tree blog and I’m hear to nerd out on trees so start writing about trees or I’m going to leave and go eat steak and bounce on my trampoline,” you say.
Fair enough, here you go: trees and teeth are the same thing. Nobody gets jacked up to pay for a rotten tooth to get pulled. People aren’t pitching tents on the sidewalk outside Precision Tree Services to be the first to buy a ticket for a dead Douglas Fir removal.
You’re not spending money on the procedure, you’re paying to get rid of the pain. You’re spending to relieve stress. If your teeth all fall out of your head, it’s going to be pretty hard to eat that steak. If your dead fir smashes through your kitchen, it’s going to be pretty hard to eat that steak.
“Holy shit,” you say. The realization hits you like Bruce Willis seeing dead people.
“James, are we in the Matrix?” you ask.
Yes, yes we are in the Matrix and you can get whatever you want if you focus your mind and persist. Hold up. We got sidetracked somewhere around Douglas Firs and dead people. We’re concerned with trees and teeth.
Here are 5 ways trees and teeth are the same:
- Prevention is *a lot* cheaper than procrastination
Let’s say you decide to leave all your teeth work for 10 years so you can get all your root canals, fillings and braces done all at the same time. Do I have to outline, in graphic detail, the outcome of that decision?
Now, let’s say you decide to leave all your tree work for 10 years so you can get all your hedges, hazard tree removals and view clearing done all at the same time. Your hedges are now so overgrown that to get them back to the size you want you’ll have to hack the heck out of them causing brown holes and maybe even death. Your hazard trees actually already fell over, but they hit Grandma’s red minivan so she sued you and she doesn’t make you cookies anymore. Your view is totally obstructed and, like your hedges, the trees blocking it face serious ER-like trauma if you’re going to see the water again (and you’re going to see the water again).
How on earth could you have avoided this whole kafubble? Well, by being proactive and getting your trees and your teeth checked regularly by a professional.
Take the dead ones out, fast.
Your blind date walks into the gelato shop, you can tell because for the first time ever she looks exactly like her Tinder profile pic. You can’t believe this smokin’ hotty swiped to see you. You’re a smooth operator and already have a Strawberry Smash waiting. You casually slide it over to her, super cool. She recognizes you, sees the Smash and smiles warmly.
“Hey hey hey,” you say to yourself. And then you notice her big black front tooth.
The feeling you’ve got right now? That’s exactly how I feel when I get called to a beautiful property and see an ugly dead hazard tree right in the middle of it all. There’s no bucket truck access and now what would have been a simple removal requires more time and skill (read: more cost) to take down safely. What a shame, if only I had been called earlier….
The solution to prevent heartbreak in both cases is to take the dead ones out – the sooner the better – for everyone involved.
The work needs to be done with precision
“It looks like we took out the wrong tooth,” your dentist says.
“What the f*ck man? I came in for a filling!” you reply.
You can’t afford mistakes with your teeth, they don’t grow back. Guess what? Your trees won’t grow back either, at least not in your lifetime. So for work on irreplaceable things like smiles and trees, make sure that the professional you hire knows how to work with precision.
Personal appearance matters
Would you hire a dentist with jagged, missing teeth and tattered rags for clothes? How about a tooth expert who doesn’t feel it necessary to wear gloves, fails to give you glasses for the spray, or uses shitty dirty broken tools?
Would you hire an arborist with jagged, missing teeth and tattered rags for clothes? How about a tree expert who doesn’t feel it necessary to wear gloves, wear glasses for the spray, or shitty broken tools?
Hell no, that’s gross. I just puked in my mouth a bit.
You know when something is wrong
Immediately, you can tell the steak is done to precision. The grill marks are perfect. Thick, savory steam wafts to your nose. Deliciousness defined.
The first cut confirms it. You take that first bite and lightning spears of pain shoot from your mouth to your brain. It’s that damn bad tooth again.
It doesn’t take a dentist to figure out when you’ve got something wrong with your teeth.
Now, stand back for a second while I throw the whole arboricultural tree service industry under the bus. You don’t need a tree service professional to tell you when you’ve something wrong with your trees. Maybe rats are jumping off of the branches over your house and eating your electrical wiring. Maybe your power service is so buried that every time the snow falls your mast gets torn out of your house. Either way, you know you have a problem.
Don’t get me wrong, a professional will be able to help you determine how bad your tree or tooth problem is, outline some solutions and help fix it. But. You need to trust your gut. If you think your arborist or your dentist is pulling your leg, kick their butt to the curb and get better help. You’ll feel it when the vibrations are off.
Bringing it all together
You want to spend money on your trees like you want another hole in your head. You do not want another hole in your head. You do want to get smarter, safer and even better looking. Seriously. So hire tree experts and tooth doctors that work with precision. Right?