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Brought The Sucker Down
by Dale Brown, 2008

ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED AT TheBigFiveOh.com Blog @ Yahoo.Com, 3/15/08

After living in virtual fear for the past few days, we finally decided to attack the issue of the icy Sword of Damocles.

My brother Ken came over, and we assessed the situation. We decided it had to come down--I was tired of evacuating rooms in our house, and besides no one was putting any money down on the "when is the thing going to fall?" pool.

Poking the thing with the roof rake wasn't enough--it was on there pretty solid. We thought about shooting hot water at it, but that might take a long time. We considered drilling holes in it, but I didn't want anyone near it in case it unexpectedly let go. I wished for a laser big enough to do the job, but we're not the Jetsons or Star Trek. Yet.

But then Ken found a tree saw in the garage and went at it. He cut the iceberg in half so the whole monstrosity wouldn't come down, then sawed on the trunk of the thing itself until it finally succumbed. The plywood we put in place saved the section of roof below.

The 100-pound berg was held up there by a shaft of ice no more than three inches in diameter.

We have several other ice floes up there, some much larger than the one we brought down this morning, but I don't think they'll fall off the roof, and if they do they won't do any damage unless someone is below them. We're careful these days not to park and not let any kids play in the danger zone.

Colder temps and a little snow is in the forecast for the next few days, so our roof glacier problem is going to be with us awhile longer.

I've said it before, but I'll say it again: my brother Ken can fix a rainy day! Thanks, bro!

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