You can see from the picture that this tree has problems. It is about a 50-year old ash with several large dead branches. The Emerald ash borer insect has arrived in Lincoln and given the problems this tree already had, it didn't seem like a good candidate to try to save. (We have a newer Mountain Ash that is in great shape and we are going to try to save it.) Since we were going to let it go in its present form, we decided it should be transmogrified into a piece of art. A fitting end, don't you think?

The first step is to have the major top branches cut off. Usually tree trimmers come in with a crew of several people and lots of equipment. This was a one-man crew with what you see here and he completed it in one really hot day.

This is how it looked when he completed his work.

Now the chainsaw artist could take over. He cut off the top pieces that he didn't need, stripped the bark and rough cut the critters into the trunk.

Getting closer to completion.

This is the finished product as viewed from our house. It has birds and animals that we have either had or seen from our backyard feeding area. The mallard at the bottom visits our fountain pond every once in a while. We see sandhill cranes flying over during their migration. We have fox pair living in the area that frequents the feeders looking for food. At the top we have a Northern Cardinal, Blue Jay, Baltimore Oriole, and American Goldfinch.

One person did most of the work including all the major cuts. His wife came in and did most of the final detail work. They used five different sizes of chainsaws and completed the work in one week.

This is the view from the cul-de-sac. The best view is from the other side so I added a path to encourage visitors to walk around it. There is a swallowtail butterfly on the right and a blue morpho in the left. This is the one exception to animals seen from our yard. It is a gorgeous butterfly we saw in Costa Rico and had to add it.

All the pieces are carved directly from the trunk with the exception of the cardinal on the top right. This was carved off-site and added later.