Death by remote control airplane...

The other night, the husband took his little remote control airplane out to fly it. Instead of going out to the back pasture, he went to the front yard, which was stupid all the way around because it's had a problem with the engine cutting out, dumping the plane right there. He thought he had fixed it, though.

So as I sat in the house watching "So you think you can dance", here came the husband with a solemn look of sheer stupidity on his face.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"I'm stupid." he said.

>shock< "Really? Why now?" "The engine cut out. My plane is in a tree." After rolling fits of laughter, I asked which one. Not just in one of the six pine trees, but at the very TOP of one of the six pine trees... Nice aim. We paused SYTYCD (I love DVR) and I went out to inspect the damage. Perhaps he was joking? He wasn't. So how does one get a styrofoam airplane out of the top of a 40-45 foot tall pine tree?

Well, first you tie a rope on a wrench and throw it up there, and when that doesn't work, then you tie a hammer to the rope. When that doesn't work, you get a bigger hammer and some bright pink nylon string. When it's good and stuck and the string breaks... you scratch your head for a couple of hours and finally decide to try that first idea of climbing the tree. It's either that or train the squirrels to fly an airplane.
So the father in law (who was helping us with this whole project because he likes to be in the middle of everything) goes and gets the ladder while the husband goes in and puts on 42 layers of clothes to avoid being eaten alive by this big gangly pine tree. They stand up the 20 foot tall ladder, the husband climbs it and once getting to the top, realizes that there is no possible way he can get through those branches and back down in one piece. To heck with it, leave the plane there. So he climbs down.

"Oh, for $%@*& sake, I'll climb the $&*# tree myself!" yells the father in law, and up he goes.

Meanwhile, the mother in law comes back from her bike ride with news that she's informed the whole neighborhood of our plight and the brother in law is coming with over with a 20 foot saw. Rather, it's a small saw on a 20 foot long pole. I guarantee, if you ever need something unusual, he is the go to guy as he's probably got two of them.

So... we hand the 20 foot saw up to the father in law who has climbed a good six feet above the ladder standing on itty bitty pine tree branches. The dust is thick, the branches are thin, he's coughing and wheezing from the dust up there and can hardly move (which is a good thing, since we didn't want him to fall out).

Then there is the mother in law, who is standing on the ground screaming, "GET DOWN! GET DOWN NOW! I SAID GET DOWN. YOU ARE GOING TO FALL! OH! OH!" while the father in law is up there yelling "When I was five years old, my dad made me climb to the top of a 68 foot poplar tree with a handsaw and cut the top off, instead, I built a tree house up there and never came down for the next 14 years." You know how old people are with their tales of "when I was a kid we walked 48 miles to school uphill both ways in 18 foot snowdrifts 365 days a year."

He won. He knocked the plane out. He returned to the ground in one piece. Covered in pine tree sap.

Just be careful walking under this pine tree... there's still a hammer up there that could fall at any moment.