The Acornleones
By Roland Lara on Feb 23, 2006 5:32PM
This could be the best lede we’ve read all week:
A retired Chicago forestry bureau supervisor ... admitted Wednesday that he tried to thwart a federal grand jury investigation into a secretly monitored plot to whack two Lincoln Park trees.
A tree whacking. A thwarted tree whacking.
Aw, yeah.
Bruno Bertucci (HOLD ALL COMMENTS UNTIL THEN END!) is the retired Chicago forestry bureau supervisor. He lives in Bridgeview (WAIT UNTIL THE END!). Bertucci was contacted by two former city workers concerning felling two trees in Lincoln Park to make way for a driveway. Bertucci arranged to have another would-be arboreal assassin handle the grisly, sap-curdling deed, but the guy ended up wearing a wire and got Bertucci on tape, “You know, I says, forget about it. Don’t let these guys scare you.” (NOT UNTIL THE END!) Oh, and the original two former city guys have already pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the Hired Truck Scandal. (NOT YET!) And the one guy’s name is John “Quarters” Boyle. (OKAY, LET ‘ER RIP.)
“Quarters” and his buddy allegedly said that two residential developers put a bounty of five grand on the two trees, which are found in the 1900 block of North Burling.
How much do we love living in Chicago? Here even God damned trees can have a hit put out on them for five large.
Chicagoist had a lot of fun talking about this today around our virtual water cooler.
And we says to the other guy, we says, hey! How’ bout dem trees!
You’re dead to me, tree! You’re going to be some beaver’s bitch by sundown!
As far back as I can remember I always wanted to be Paul Bunyan.
Funny how? Like a lumberjack? Like I amuse you?
Although if people are willing to whack trees, they’re probably willing to whack bloggers, so everything in this post is alleged. We’d hate to wake up in our bed next to a severed oak bough.
Or end up sleeping with the acorns.