Exploding Trees and Baby Robins

The thunder roared
The lightning flashed
A tree fell down
And a fence got smashed.

I think by now that you have probably figured out that we had a tree hit by lightning last Monday. Thankfully, there were no fires, no trees on houses, and no one was hurt, but it was exciting all the same.

It was 2 o'clock in the afternoon and I was engrossed in a book. Earlier we had had a brief rain storm that didn't amount to much. Soon, the sun was coming back out and it looked like everything was clearing. All that was left were a few rumblings in distance.

Then all at once there was a bright flash--hurt your eyes kind of bright flash--and the loudest crack of thunder I had ever heard--simultaneously. No counting seconds between this thunder and lightning to see how far away the storm was. It was on top of us. I sprung out of my chair to see what had happened with a huge surge of adrenaline and a rapidly beating heart. I knew there had to be a lightning strike somewhere close.

Meanwhile, Theo, who was in the basement, came upstairs and asked what was going on up here. He heard the crack and said then lights went out in his room. At the same time, he also felt a tingle go up his arm. We then looked to see if something were on fire because we smelled an electrical burning smell. Luckily, we found no fire.  While we were searching, the neighbor came over to tell us that one of our trees had been hit by lightning. So now I knew where it hit.

Later, we started to understand more of what had happened. Although the lightning technically didn't strike our house, it certainly affected our house. First it totally fried our telephone, internet, and cable service so we were without those for a couple of days. When that got fixed, we figured out that our TV was fried, too. When we tried to move another TV into the spot, we figured out that there were additional problems that hadn't been fixed. We have to have someone out again to take a look at that.

In the meantime, I thought my hair dryer was broken, but it turns the circuit I had it plugged into, didn't work anymore. Luckily Ward was able to fix that with some rewiring. However, today we found another circuit that is also not working along with the fan on our radon remediation system. I'll start calling tomorrow to find people to come fix the latest problems we found. This lightning strike is the gift that just keeps on giving as our neighbor had his TV system fried also.

The tree is definitely not going to survive this, so we've started to get estimates on taking it down. I hope we're done finding the damage and we can just concentrate on fixing things.

Here's the take away from all of this. The lightning seemed to come out of nowhere. The storm was not close. I had always heard that you need to be careful because lightning can strike as far away as ten miles from a storm but I've not always paid attention to that warning. I've seen that happen now for myself and I'm going to be more careful. I encourage you to, also.

As for the baby robins, since I last talked to you, I've seen the robin eggs hatch, the babies grow and leave the nest. It all seemed to happen so fast. Apparently, it was. Robins leave the nest almost a week sooner than wrens and bluebirds--the birds I'm more familiar with. Watching the baby robins has been exciting, but in an entirely different way than the lightning strike. And that's good because I have had quite my fill of excitement for the week.

Here are a few pictures of the recent happenings.

After the lightning strike, the top of the tree was just gone. Most of the branches landed fairly close, but the bark that blew off was strewn farther afield.

The tree used to be twice this tall.

Some of the branches were charred from the heat.

On other fronts, we watched the progression of some baby robins. When we last saw them, they were still in the egg.

They were born on July 10.

One short week later, they had most of their feathers.

Two days later, they were out of the nest. I actually saw this one leave. It really couldn't fly although it was trying. It awkwardly hopped along flapping it's wings and occasionally got its feet off the ground.

It was really still just a baby.

And its mother was watching close by.

So that's the excitement recently. Also, I've taken on some extra projects at work that are going to have me pretty busy during the next month. But I hope to check in then and again.

Until next time...