Spaceship Landed Here by Bruce Wakeland
Tom, I think a space ship landed here!
Tom was a forester who worked for me for 22 years. It was late spring 1986 in a large woods south of Warsaw, Indiana. Tom and I were doing a woodland inspection to formulate management recommendation for the owner. We were walking through the middle of the woods when we spotted an area of sun light reaching the forest floor just ahead. We headed toward the light to see what was going on. What we found was an area where everything was freshly dead. The dead area formed a near perfect circle on the ground about 50 feet across. All the plants on the forest floor were wilted, turning brown, and losing their leaves. This circle of death formed a stark contrast to the lush green of the surrounding area which had a dense cover of spring flowers. Tom and I both became involved in trying to figure out what caused this circle of death. Looking up, we soon realized that it was actually a cylinder of death. Everything directly above the dead area on the ground was also dead, including the tops of the trees within the circle, and branches of other trees that simply reach into the cylinder.
We started to eliminate possible causes. Did someone dump or spill herbicide? No, there were no woodland lanes or equipment tracks, and we were out in the middle of large woods. Did a crop duster aircraft spill herbicide from above? No, liquid falling from above would not form such a perfect cylinder pattern. And besides, herbicides are selective, and everything within this cylinder was dead. Maybe it was lighting? We looked and looked for, and did not find, any sign of a lighting strike on any of the trees. For such a large area of death it would have to of been a big strike, and for a perfect cylinder to form, the tree would likely be right in the middle of the cylinder.
We were running out of time and ideas, and that is when I said,” Well Tom, I think a space ship landed here.” We took one last look around before getting back to work, and that is when I found it, the clue we needed. Right in the middle of the cylinder of death, on the back side of a 10-inch diameter pole sized pignut hickory tree, was a fresh lighting strike. It was hidden under the bark, and the only reason I found it was I taped the tree with my Biltmore stick. As soon as I heard the sound of lose bark, I knew we had it.
Our theory goes like this. It was a thunder storm with a lot of rain about a week before. A big bolt of lightning struck this tough little hickory tree in the middle of the cylinder. The lighting discharged down the hickory into the very wet ground creating steam. The heat of the steam is what did the killing. The wind must have been calm, allowing the ball of steam to rise straight up, killing everything above in this near perfect cylinder of death. I have seen the results of hundreds of lighting strike and what they can do to trees, and no two have been quite the same. This one is one of the strangest.
If you do not like our theory, you are welcome to believe that a spaceship land there.