...I've got you beat. About 3 years ago, on an early April afternoon, I decided I was going to finally cut down a very scraggly, unsightly tree that had been bugging me for years in my front side yard. I have no idea what kind of tree it was, but it looked kind of like a crab apple, only bigger. The trunk was probably only 10" in diameter, and maybe stood 10' tall before it just exploded into hundreds of small branches. So my plan was, to rope it off as high as I could reach from my extension ladder, and have my buddy pull it into my yard as I cut it. It seemed pretty straightforward at the time. (I'm sure it's fairly evident by now where this story is going...)

So my buddy has the rope pulled nice and taught and wrapped around another tree in my front yard. I start making the cut, and it doesn't take long before things start to go south. What I had not recognized was that the tree had a bunch of thick vines intermingled with the branches, and these vines were growing from the neighbor's side of the tree, and between the tree and the road. So, as I started to cut the trunk, the vines actually started pulling the tree toward the road. We instantly panicked, but no matter how hard we pulled the rope, there was nothing we could do. We watched in horror as gravity took over and slowly laid the tree over toward the road....and onto the overhead power lines. Thankfully it didn't come down fast, and it was only tall enough that the uppermost branches came to rest on the lines, so the lines didn't break. However, one branch landed across two lines, which sent high voltage current through it...and caused it to ignite in flames.

At this point, full blown panic set in. I scrambled to call the fire department first, and then called Dominion Power. By the time the fire truck arrived, the local transformer fuse had already blown, and the fire went out, so they didn't stick around long. Dominion sent out a guy in a bucket truck with a pole saw, and he spent about 30 minutes clearing the limbs off of the lines, then restored power to our street.

So, I managed to require an emergency response from the fire department and power company, and managed to inconvenience my neighbors with a power outage. Much worse than simply getting your truck stuck in your muddy yard, and definitely one of the most embarrassing incidents of my life...and also my last foray into tree felling.