Dear Tweeters,

I want to reassure my dad that the family of northern redbreasted sapsuckers
working over his twenty-year-old mountain ash tree will not girdle (and
kill) it. The trunk is riddled with holes all around and is black (from sap
oozing?) on the lowest five feet. Has anyone in Tweeterland seen evidence
of death-by-sapsucker? I haven't, but I haven't been looking for it either.

Darrel Whipple
Rainier, Oregon
dwhipple at columbia-center.org