Almost got arrested pruning a Norway maple in a cemetery

I was trimming a big Norway maple at Oak Hill Cemetery in town last month when a groundskeeper came running over yelling I was vandalizing graves. Turns out I was 10 feet inside the wrong property line and that tree belonged to the church next door. Anyone else ever accidentally trespass while on a job?

2 comments

2 Comments

patricia_chen6714d ago

Got a call to trim some limbs for an elderly lady once, pulled up to the address she gave me, and started working on this big oak in her front yard. About twenty minutes in, her neighbor comes storming out waving a survey map, turns out the property line was ten feet off and I was cutting branches off his tree. The lady paid me for the job anyway and the neighbor ended up giving me a free pie the next week, so I guess it worked out weirdly. I mean, who even has property lines that don't line up with the actual trees, right? Idk, maybe it's just me but I always ask for a property map now before I touch anything near a border.

rowangonzalez14d ago

That line about "who even has property lines that don't line up with the actual trees" is exactly what I told my buddy Dave after he had this happen. He was trimming a big silver maple for a guy, spent two hours up in the tree taking off dead branches, and then the neighbor came out saying half the tree was on his land. Dave was so worried he was gonna get sued but the neighbor just asked if he could trim his side of the same tree while he was up there and offered him twenty bucks for the trouble. Still cracks me up thinking about that guy waving a tape measure at him from the ground while Dave was just trying to finish his work.