🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sun, 20 Jan 2002 02:09:50 GMT,  David Scruggs <bcfd36@aol.com>  wrote:
>Has anyone out there ever taken a cat out of a tree? It came up in a
>local newsgroup I read. We don't, and I don't know if we have ever had
>the opportunity.

Been there, done that. The ladder company I serve on conducted a "cat in tree"
rescue once about 15 years ago. A woman who lived across the street from our
station came over and asked if we could get her cat down from a 40' Oak tree.
So, we pulled the ladder truck out across the street and extended the aerial
up into the branches. It wasn't an official or logged call either.
The guy that agreed to make the rescue in the first place (he was acting Lt. at
the time), went up the stick and disappeared about 30' up into the foliage. All
any of us could see from the ground was a lot of swaying and thrashing tree
branches and a flashlight (did I forget to mention it was night time?). 
Next thing we see is this object come sailing down through the branches, hit the
ground then take off running. Of course it was the cat. Our hero up in the trees
was tired of getting his ass kicked up there and when finally he latched on to
the cat (or the cat latched on to him) he just threw it down to the ground.
It would have been funny, in tragic sort of way, if the cat promptly ran into
the street and got hit by a car.

>Dave Scruggs
>Captain, Boulder Creek Fire
>Boulder Creek, Calif.