Christmas: Throw Out Your Tree If It Has This
Ok, I’m a fresh cut tree guy. I’ll address the headline: Christmas: Throw Out Your Tree If It Has This, in a moment.
Each year, I go to the tree farm. I ask the young, bearded attendant: “Son, find me a tree that represents who I am.”
He replies: “Sir, we don’t sell fake.” After I recalculate his tip, I forge on to find our perfect tree!
Inspect Your Tree!
I turn into Clark Griswold on cut-the-tree day. It’s an event. I prepare the SUV, with rope, my gloves, and a mat so I won’t get wet from a damp ground. My wife is ready with digital photo documentation.
Once you find your Griswold tree, this next step is important. No one wants the Chevy Chase squirrel moment in National Lampoons Christmas Vacation.
So it’s important to inspect your fresh tree BEFORE you load it into the house.
I like the tree farms that feature the shaker. It’s a wonderful innovation of mankind that shakes all the stuff from the tree, that you don’t want in your house. It’s also fun to watch, for a simple, easy to please person like me. Watching it shake, I hum the catchy melody, Legs, by ZZ-Top.
When we got the tree home, my wife found this story on the internet:
What the HECK is that? So much to my shock, this guy found a mass with what he says is 200 preying mantis eggs.
Immediately, we inspected our tree and did not find 200 preying mantis eggs. Add to that, our little feline spy, Ellie, is always on patrol to find things all alive, in our house. Ellie reports there is nothing living in the tree, as well.
If you find the sac, it’s your call if you want to throw out your tree. The gentleman in the story says he simple cut off the branch containing the sac, and placed the sac back in nature.
After a day of cutting the tree, and lugging it into the house, something tells me that I would simply remove the branch, and hire my cat Ellie, for preying mantis patrol. Honey, may I have another spiked eggnog!?
