LUMBERJACK GIVES UP TRADE AFTER HEARING TREE WEEP

Portland, OR
October 7, 2005

Patrick O’Brien has given up his lifelong profession of tree-chopping because of a bizarre incident that has turned him from tree-cutter to tree-hugger. Just last June, O’Brien was chopping down an oak tree when he heard it start to cry.

“It was the damndest thing I have ever heard in my life,” explains O’Brien. “I was just doing my thing, you know, cutting down the tree, like I have been doing all my life. Well, all the sudden about 3 chops into it I hear this little murmur….kinda like a child sobbing. Well, I stopped and looked around and didn’t see anything so I swung my axe again. Right as it hit the tree I heard this really loud wail. It sounded just like someone screaming and crying in pain.”

The cries, it turned out were coming not from someone, O’Brien believes they were coming from the tree.

“Well, I hit the tree one more time and the scream was so loud that I dropped my axe on the ground. I admit, it scared the jeepers out of me. Then I got really close to that tree and I put my ear up to it, on my honor I swear I could hear it crying in there. That’s when I realized, this tree has feelings and I have been hitting it with an axe! Well, I got right up to that tree and put my arms around it and started whispering to it. I told it I wouldn’t hurt it no more. Well, that got it to be quiet.”

O’Brien stayed with the tree for the next 3 hours waiting to hear if it would start crying again. After he was certain that it was fine, he got back in his truck and headed home.

“I didn’t tell nobody but my wife for 3 weeks. I figured if I went around telling people about it they’d throw me in the looney bin. But, after a while I had to come clean with my buddies since I hadn’t been working and all. How am I supposed to go back out there and cut down more trees knowing I’m hurting them? I don’t think that’s a very Christian thing to do.”

O’Brien instead went to work for a landscaping firm where instead of cutting down trees every day he plants them.

“This is a lot more gratifying. All day long I get to give these trees new homes. Sure, some people think I’m a little strange for talking to them, but I haven’t had one die on my yet. I know that they are listening.”