Cut-itis

Ever met someone who just has to chop down and cut up anything that grows taller than himself? If so, you've met a cut-itis sufferer.

We've got one on campus - horrifyingly enough he's the farm manager, in charge of the forested land the college owns. Put him in a house, and he'll chop down the biggest and oldest mulberry tree around. Give him a forest and he'll let a logging company come in and strip it bare for profit. Put him in another house, he'll chop down an ancient pine that's been there since the college's inception nearly a hundred years ago. Ask him to trim an overhanging branch, and you'll come back later to find a stump. Give him a dam surrounded by 50-year old eucalyptus and he's felling them as quickly as he can, turning the water a strange dark blue as their smaller branches are left to float.

I don't know what it is with this guy. Perhaps it's his background as volunteer fire-fighter that makes him want to get rid of anything that can catch alight. Or he might just hate trees. Perhaps he prefers bare ground to shade-covered greenness.

I wish he'd leave them alone though. I get really sad when things that have taken so long to grow, that are majestically beautiful, get mown down, chopped up and sold for firewood.