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Jury Riggers Unite!
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Big Energy vs Going Green: The battle continues…
When I was a kid, there was a tree like this in my neighborhood. The tree was right by the road, and there was a big crescent cut out of its canopy for power lines to go through, and I called it the Pac-Man Tree, because that’s exactly what it looked like!
EMF s don’t affect living tissue? Riiiiight, Mr. power company representatve, may I show you…..
where i grew up we had a tree where they just cut a whole in it to put the lines through no crevice or anything just a whole because that was where they wanted that line to go through i was like wtf
Looks just fine from the street right in front of the house!
@fordprefect: Not at power distribution line levels, no. (Sufficiently strong fields do have an effect – look up NMR imaging or levitating frogs.) However, branches touching or falling on the lines is the most common cause of power outages. They do some tree pruning to minimize them, but I’ve never seen it done as severely as this one was.
the cedars in the front of my horse pasture are all done that way. it looks terrible!
Just tell people they’re banana trees.
Q: When does a banana tree not produce bananas?
A: When it’s a maple tree.
Doesn’t it look like a big banana?
Edward Scissorhands!!1
cutting a tree is more complicated than it looks like… cuz it needs a lot of knowledge and care…. otherwise the tree will regard this… when the next storm is raging ….
LMFAO! I just love the fact that (on my screen anyway) there’s a nice PG&E banner about clean energy programs!
Actually. This tree is just allergic to elecricity. It got repelled.
When I bought my house I found that the tree branches were tied back into the trunk with wire. I thought it was the weirdest thing. Now I know that the prev owners were trying to prevent the power company from doing THIS!
@ Jon, yeah, was j/k but the shape of the cut made me consider for a moment the possibility the tree was “avoiding” the line.
Yup! They do that all the time. I had to beg them to do a “V” cut thru the oak tree in my yard rather than just top it. They *really* just wanted to cut it down. The power company only has to pay for that once. They have to pay to trim the trees every few years.
thats a kidney-bean tree.
This is everywhere in New Orleans, especially since Katrina. The trees that did not get knocked over all got butchered by the power company. And just like in this pic they overcompensted and cut way tooo much so it would not have to be done for many more years.
No, it’s an Oscar Mayer Wiener tree.
Another tree like this…
So, when the tree falls on my house because it’s unbalanced, do we get to sue the power company?
Very nice picture it is all in the perspective, right.
Common very common. They power company cuts the tree as far back as it can. If they could have gotten away with it they would have cut from the end of the sidewalk up.
This is taking topiary to a whole new level. Shame they chose to shape it like a cheese puff.
I guess leaves are positively charged.
Oh… You *wish* it was an Oscar Mayer Wiener tree.
This is nothing. You should see what the water company did to the roots.
The moon is made of green trees.
Relax. It’s only a Yin tree. The Yang trees are across the street.
First, the tree is pruned that way.
Second, and I’ve seen this first hand, the tree is in danger of falling on that house.
There are trees near us that are pruned the same way, but the “heavy” side is away from the houses. One night during a storm two of them fell over, toward the heavy side.
If I lived in that house I would move.
Looks like a pickle! “Hey whatever tickles your pickle!”
Its a giant caterpillar! Watch out!
Where’d they get the idea? Freud’s school of gardening?
That house looks REAL familiar. In fact, that looks like some place in Anaheim, on Magnolia Ave.
Note to self: don’t piss off the power company.
omg who thought of that one lol that tree is now unstable if its still standing at all lol
The power company has recommended clearances for power. The reason is that the voltage can jump and ground lines, or also create an electrocution hazard for those who touch the tree. The grounding of a line would cause a fault, and no one would have power on that set of lines….
Thus power line clearance is necessary. When the cuts are made correctly, you end up with a tree that is “missshapen”, but does not require much further maintenance. This is far better than the abominations I have seen.
I am an arborist and I own my own tree care company. The epicormic growth from being cut severely likely gave this tree the appearance that the tree grew this way, but it was indeed line-clearance pruned.
The power lines are likely 69KV, that is 69,000 volts. The clearance for a tree around that power I believe is 7′-2″ minimum.
Hope this helps end the confusion for everyone.
-Michael J., arborist from PA
The city cares not for these “property values” of which you speak.
Of course, where I live, they’d just kill the whole damn thing and give you a measly shrub to plant in its place.
this is a fake :S
pretty much looks like something i would do. i’m half way there with a tree in my yard already.
god, you people are stupid. trees are bloody strong. and the canopy of a tree is about 70% air. it wont fall over. thats what roots are for, dummass.
@jez
It’s a giant armchair
This is not a fake, that’s America for you, especially Midwestern America………..in a fight between beautiful, neighborhood enhancing trees and fugly, disgusting power lines; guess which one will win every time? The fugly, disgusting power lines. I have NEVER seen a neighborhood that moved power lines to save trees; trees are ALWAYS butchered to some horrible misconfiguration to save the spot where power lines are.
I think this one deserves the “nom” tag. It’s a Pac-Man tree!
Did’t you know all trees lean toward the sun?
I might have taken it a bit farther. Prune the back side of the curve to smooth it, and shape the whole thing to look something like a parabolic dish. (Granted, to respect the line clearance, either the center of the dish would have to be made a tad deeper, or it’d only be a linear cross-section of the ellipsoid.)
If you put some arms on it it would look like an Ape lol.That,s what you would call experienced tree work from a utility tree co…Tat needs more training
Jamie, your screen wouldn’t be working to show the PG&E banner if they didn’t trim the trees!
What do you mean “the power company has to pay”? Because they are likely a regulated monopoly the government says their customers have to pay. The “power company” gets to recover every cent it pays to keep your trees out of their lines.
Reduce it to bottom line: This is typical of what we are doing to our planet to sustain our desire for convenience and control of nature.
That’s wild.
Ever since Hurricane Isabel (I think that was the one) whooped up on us here a few years ago and we went without power for almost 20 days, the power company sends out crews a few months before Hurricane Season to clear tree branches away from power lines. We have this one main road named “High St.” that has hundredes of trees growing really close together that grow right over the power lines, the trees run for probably 4 miles on a really busy part of the road, once they are finished cutting them back it ends up with hundreds of trees looking like the one in the picture. Looks really crazy riding down High St. after the trees have been cut back.
They don’t curve them like that here, they cut more of an L shape out of them but it still looks really trippy with them all lined up together.
Jolly Green Giant’s banana chair of choice.
Is this the opening to the new bananas in pajamas live action movie? XD lol
I was a line clearence tree trimmer some years ago and can say first hand this is far from uncommon. Basicly the power company owns the space under the line and by law must keep an insulating buffer of about 10 ft around power lines. If the home owners don’t want their tree completely removed the trimmers will still make sure the buffer is maintained. I’ve seen trees that after years of growing and being trimmed will have a 20 ft wide hole through the center of the crown, like a tree donut.(10 ft in all directions)
It looks like a Dr. Seuss tree!
@Jamie
And on mine, an ad for EvergreeN Arborists consultants (what does that mean, anyway?)
“OM NOM NOM.”
Does this neighborhood ever have a full moon?
Sadly, this looks like about half the trees in my hometown. There’s one just down the street that has a single branch left and it’s a very large tree. It was a beautiful tree before they “pruned” it.
the new species of banana-trees.
doesn’t anyone else Know its a pickle tree? they’re native to lolerland! wonder how one got on earth?
So THATS what a banana tree looks like.