Former Austinite Whacks Down Trees

The owner of Casa de Muse laughed in the face of tree huggers, denied her Austin heritage and earned a stern finger shaking from all who wear Birkenstocks, by willfully allowing two mature pine trees to be whacked down in her front yard in Fort Bend County this weekend. The homeowner - a former Austinite who really should know better than to tick off the Choose Life! Save a Tree! crowd - claimed there was "pine bark beetle" infestation and insisted the trees be removed from her property before another hurricane of Ike-ic proportions tore through her neighborhood, causing the mighty pines to crash through her roof and harm her impressionable teenagers. How many arborists examined the trees for the supposed disease? How many poets? How many Barton Creek swimmers? How many radar tools were used to gather color images of the decay inside each trunk? How many air tools were employed to delicately blow away soil from the roots and inspect them? Twenty? Ten? No, only one lousy arborist advised that the trees should go. So, the iconic pines on a bucolic street in Sugar Land were chopped down and carried off by an uncaring small man with a saw and a truck. In an act of utter defiance, the homeowner refused to allow the felled trees to be turned into benches, sculptures, mulch, guitars or souvenirs.