Monday, December 2, 2024

Grapefruit Trees and Rebar...The Odd Pair!

  The oddities found on the Bayou never fail to intrigue me.  By oddities, I am referring to things found where they do not belong.  Sure, I find the occasional trowel on a tree stump or perhaps part of my lawnmower in the bushes (different story but still interesting) but those are nothing compared to say a filet knife found on the rooftop!  I have yet to figure out how that got there and whether I have some unknown enemy out there threatening my wellbeing with a filet knife! Still, these things are interesting, to say the least.

  Today's find?  Well...a piece of rebar.  While that, in itself, is not the most unusual find, the whereabouts of said rebar is.  What in the world was a piece of rebar doing up in the top of the grapefruit tree???  That...my friends...is the question of the day!

  Mark finally took the notion to cut out the dead parts of the citrus trees.  Termites had taken up residence in the roots of the trees and pretty much killed the grapefruit trees.  (Who says that citrus oil helps prevents an infestation??  Yeah, I read that somewhere.  Definitely not true.)  Anyway, as he cut the thirty foot tall trees down, a piece of rebar came tumbling to the ground.  Thankfully, it did not hit anyone or anything as it plummeted to the ground.  


  The rebar is bent into a lovely hook-shape making me ponder if someone had tried to use it to shake down fruit at some point.  It is approximately twenty-one inches long so is quite large.  I asked Son, since he has always picked the fruit from these huge trees for us, but he says that he always just climbed the trees.  Yep, that is something that I can vouch for as I am the one to "catch" those hefty fruits as he tosses them from the treetops.  Mark said he did not attempt such a dangerous game of tossing a rebar thirty feet into the air and I know I could never heave that thing up there.  This leaves me one conclusion...perhaps the rebar was hung on a low limb when the tree was small and then hoisted as the tree grew?  Who knows???  Surely, it was not the same culprit that left the knife on the rooftop....you think?  

  All is well that ends well, however.  The grapefruit trees are thinned of dead wood and the danger of the rebar hook has now passed.  Still...lingering questions....always lingering questions!


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