Monkey Tree Rescue
If you thought this blog is a tale of my adventures with a bunch of monkeys, you’d be wrong.
While growing up, we had about four or five acres of beautiful, unspoiled land dotted with majestic live oak trees, huge sandstone boulders, and even a creek. We nick named one of the smaller live oak trees The Monkey Tree. The Monkey Tree had branches that were quite low. There were about three tree limbs which a kid could swing on much like a monkey bar. We had great fun hanging from the branches like a bunch of monkeys and also climbing up to the higher limbs.
Well as the story goes, one day my younger sister followed us to the Monkey Tree. She was quite young at the time perhaps four or five years old. She was blond and as cute as could be but she had a mind of her own. She pretty much did want she wanted to do. Anyway, she decided to climb up the Monkey Tree while we were swinging on the branches and that’s when things went wrong. The tree branch was shaped like a “Y” and my sister placed her foot in the bottom of the “Y”. When we stopped swinging on the branches and dropped to the ground, the two branches moved up and her foot became entrapped in the tree. If you ever tried to do anything with an oak tree, hardwood is not easy to work with. We tried to get her foot out but couldn’t move it so I went to find my mom.
My mom’s first answer was, “You’d better get her out of the tree!” I came back a second time and this time she went to The Monkey Tree with me. She assessed the situation and it was pretty serious. We had no phone and our Dad was away at the time. If my sister moved too much, she would break her ankle or her leg. My mom put on her leather gloves, but could not budge the limbs. She told us to go get help. We quickly went to the park. My other sister asked this guy in a white t-shirt who was playing baseball to help. I wonder what he thought but he followed my sister, across the creek, up the dirt road, and to The Monkey Tree. I brought the Park Ranger.
My mom was still trying desperately to remove my sister’s ankle from the tree when the men arrived.
Well those two guys were strong enough to move the branches so my sister could pull her foot out. That was probably the first time the Park Ranger had to do a “Tree Rescue” on non-park property and also thanks to the good Samaritan who went out of his way to help.
My sister’s foot was fine except for some scratches but we were all quite shaken with the whole experience.
Memories – True Story
I guess what we learned that day that children’s fun and games can turn into something dangerous in a blink of an eye.