(This is a memoir from my time living in Paris, which I exaggerated to create a short story based on real world events).
I was startled by a strange man’s face just outside my front room window.
This was particularly surprising given I lived on the third floor of a Haussmann apartment building in Paris, France. Which, in France, is really the fourth floor. But we can debate whether the bottom floor of a building should start at number one or zero later.
Suffice it to say, I lived high up, and so there shouldn’t be a man at my window. It naturally scared the breath out of me.
After the initial shock, I walked to the window to see what was going on. Outside in the cobblestoned courtyard there were two men, one on a tall ladder.
They were dressed in blue overalls and already sported five o’clock shadows at nine o’clock in the morning, suggesting a long night of wine and carousing. The one on the ladder was closely inspecting the branches of the European ash tree that grew tall in the center of the apartment courtyard, or called frêne in French. And for the science-y ones reading, a Fraxinus excelsior.
Paris is a busy and crowded city. And many of the apartment buildings are built around private inner courtyards such as mine, which offered some relief from the city bustle and noise.
I like trees.
Like, a lot.
I even have a Bachelor of Science in Botany. That is how much I like plants.
And I really liked this ash tree, in particular because it provided some privacy for my apartment from the windows of the units across the courtyard. And it also offered beauty and a breath of fresh air in an otherwise cemented urban setting.
The workman on the ladder scanned the branches of my tree, a cigarette hanging languidly from his lips. The other stood below fiddling with something. Then he turned, my my breath caught. I saw what he held in his hands: the murder weapon. The killing machine was primed and ready to destroy.
A red chainsaw gleamed in the early morning light.
My stomach lurched and my heart sank in pity at the sudden recognition of what was about to occur.
Paris Chainsaw Massacre.
This feature film can’t be missed in the late winter months. Anyone living more than a year in Paris has seen the devastation. And I was about to witness the crime up close, and on my ash tree.
The men hoisted up their huge chainsaw and, with a wrenching pull, started it up.
Vroom-vroom.
It reverberated across the courtyard, making the French windows on my tiny apartment rattle. A side of me wanted to run down to the courtyard and rant and rave like a good ol’ crazy American should. But I knew there was nothing I could do to stop it.
So, I pulled a chair there to sit and witness the gruesome atrocity about to occur; the train wreck you couldn’t look away from. The only thing missing was the popcorn.
They revved the chainsaw engines a while, just to inject a large dose of fear into the heart of the tree.
Then the murder and mayhem began.
They chopped off branches left and right. Leaves, twigs, and bark flew in every direction, splattering the courtyard, each piece of the victim oozing out its life sap upon the cobblestones.
Vroom-vroom.
There was no mercy.
Vroom-vroom.
They didn’t just trim a little here and there as we are apt to see in North America.
Oh no no no.
They attacked it and took every branch off.
Let me repeat: every branch.
Did you get that?
Every. Single. Branch.
It’s pretty horrific to watch.
The poor hapless victim could only stand there taking it without defense.
It was hard to tell over the noise of the chainsaw, but I was pretty certain I heard the ash tree screaming, “Noooooooo. Not my beautiful branches!”
Or maybe what I heard was the maniacal laughter of evil triumph from the workmen: “Mwaa ha ha ha.”
Finally, they turned off their death machine, and the tragic massacre was finished. The murderer and his accomplice removed the fallen remains of the tree, dragging away all evidence of the heinous crime committed that day.
They packed up their killing machine and other aid-and-abet equipment, and then left as quickly as they arrived.
Silence descended.
And where a beautiful, sprawling tree used to be, there was but a wooden pole with a couple short limbs sticking out of it; a very lonely form with an uninteresting shadow cast by the sun.
It was a page straight out of The Lorax, except I didn’t get a Thneed out of it.
I had asked several French people about this chainsaw massacre phenomenon. They replied, “They’re pruning the trees.”
We clearly have very different ideas about what pruning entails.
When I pressed that the pruning seemed a bit, um, intense, they responded, “It’s good for the trees and helps them grow.”
I nearly snorted Evian out of my nose the first time I heard this. I guess my Bachelor of Botany program had been lacking in the proper essentials.
And this travesty didn’t only occur chez moi. The tree butchers came to call every spring across Paris.
Across France.
In some cases it was every few years. But other trees got their just due every single year.
I sighed.
Now I could see right into the windows of the apartment across the courtyard from me.Goodbye minuscule privacy I used to have.
I closed my eyes in a moment of silence for the fallen.
*Note: Image from Midjourney. Prompt – Imagine: The Lorax in Paris