This story just broke my heart. Someone deliberately used lethal amounts of herbicide on Live Oak trees in Auburn, Alabama, that are estimated to be more than 130 years old. A person who called himself “Al” and a Crimson Tide fan claimed responsibility for the poisoning on a radio show. Whether or not this was really about a football rivalry, it’s a shameful and inexcusable act of eco terrorism.
If you read Three Fortunes in One Cookie, you may remember our nod to the wonderful heritage of the South’s Live Oaks. These majestic beauties have their own names and belong to their own society. There are rules and even laws governing how we treat them.
I hope whoever did this is found and punished. These trees aren’t just part of Auburn University’s football tradition. They are part of all Southerners’ hearts.
Tim in the Friendship Oak on the campus of the University of Southern Mississippi-Gulf Coast
in Long Beach in 2004.
Live Oak at the Menil Museum, Houston, Texas, 2007.
Live Oak at Becks on Westheimer, Houston, Texas, 2007.
you know, some days you just can’t get around the fact that there are just some really sucky people in the world.
You are right. And I would like to vanquish suckiness, dammit.
Oh, wow. I remember some years ago reading how some jerk did the same act to some other famous tree. They were hoping they could save it, but I don’t know if they were able to. What beautiful trees.
I wonder if you are talking about the Treaty Oak in Austin. It’s still alive, though not with the grandeur it once had.
Some people can be so…Urgh! Many of the live oaks within the local communities down here are protected as well.
They are such grand old trees. It’s hard when natural disaster or disease takes them. I can’t imagine deliberately harming one.
Stories like this make me see red. It’s a good thing I don’t know where Al lives and have an aversion to prison time as well.
The man they arrested is in his early sixties. Yesterday I saw a FB page that was supposedly his, in which he was pictured holding a baby. I wondered if it was his grandchild, and it made me so sad. Because of one criminally stupid act he may have committed, he’s changed the lives of his entire family. Grandpas should be rocking their grandbabies in the shade of these trees, not destroying them.
you know I was at the park with my little man today, and I don’t know what type of trees we have there, but I was reminded of you post and I got so angry. People in my park, were laying in the shade, the pups were chasing squirrels and people were sitting under them in benches and strolling under them on the sidewalk, and who would ever want to take away something so important to a community. It really made me think of what those trees mean to me
We joke about it, but in this case, those trees really do give and give…
He gives Als a bad name.
That dreadful sound you heard was me cackling when I saw this photo. They can’t all be like Al Camino, I guess. All he wants to do is dance, dance, dance.
I can’t even begin to express my outrage. I hope he poisoned himself.
Poor trees. I’m sure the guilty person will go to prison. If it’s the guy they arrested, he supposedly once lived in the Austin area. I’m wondering if he got such a bad idea from the poisoning of Austin’s Treaty Oak. That time, Ross Perot offered a blank check to save the tree. I hope the Toomer’s Corner oaks can be saved, but it’s not sounding good.
John Giedraitis, state urban forestry coordinator for the Texas Forest Service, who helped save the Treaty Oak in Austin after it was similarly poisoned, says it best:
The tree is an innocent sort of creature. It didn’t do anything. If anything, it’s sort of giving all the time. For someone to take it for their own selfish reason, it really angers people. It’s upsetting to people.
Oh my GOD, look at all the comments! This was written back in the day …. Anyway, I listen to podcasts during the day and one of them is by Mo Rocca called Mo-bituaries, about the deaths of famous people, and their lives as well. ( Seriously the one on Chang and Eng was fascinating… they were slave owners! ) And the last episode was on the oaks, and he interviewed the man who poisoned them, Harvey Updyke and it was fascinating. And it was a nice little testimonial to the trees and Alabama. I thought of you and this entry …
You don’t know how much I miss the world of blogging. I have readers still, but only rare commenters, and so many of our faves stopped blogging long ago. The writers mostly talk about writing now, which is fine, but I like looking into the worlds of people, and they are so much more than only writers, and it’s often the things they think are ordinary about their lives that I appreciate most.
It is, as they say, what it is.