Who's afraid of falling coconuts?

[manofthecoldland]

My wife had the two near the house dropped because of the threat they posed to the house. Not exactly big contributors of shade either.

Never had any close calls with the nuts, but we have had a near miss with a massive falling frond.

[Old55]

One of our first dates a large Jackfruit hit the tin roof directly overhead while we were eating out in 1998. 

Edited August 3, 2020 by Old55

[OnMyWay]

12 hours ago, Mike J said:

each time I hired someone to climb it to drop nuts and trim fronds I feared for their safety

We have several tall palms and it scares me to watch someone climb them!  One time, we hired the Subic Bay Freeport tree crew to trim them, and they had excellent safe equipment.  Heavy duty harness and special boots with spikes.  Their price was quite fair and they even had a chainsaw to cut the trunks into pieces.  They also arrange a truck to pick it for only p1000, I think it was.

So I thought that was the way we would go from then on.  Then one day a year ago, one of the construction workers from next door told my wife "I'll climb up and trim it" for whatever she wanted to give him for it!  I didn't know until I went outside and saw him way up there!  This tree is near a concrete area too, and that made me even more scared!  He lived to tell about it.

We have coconuts drop quite often.  I don't let the kids place in those areas.

[Guy F.]

I was told one can hire a kid to climb up and cut off the flowers when the trees are at the flowering stage. Then the nuts will not develop.

[Joey G]

3 hours ago, Guy F. said:

I was told one can hire a kid to climb up and cut off the flowers when the trees are at the flowering stage. Then the nuts will not develop.

Thats what they do Hawaii around the resorts, lots of coconut trees, no coconuts... and most of the workers are Filipino as well. They use spikes attached to boots. But the guys I like are the ones that take the bolo up and cut steps up the trunk as they go.

[JDDavao II]

My wife and I were once at a resort down past GenSan here on Mindanao. The resto is next to a small grove of coconuts in which the resort had made a children's play area. (!) We were sitting there, waiting for the food to arrive when I turned to Menchu and said, "What kind of crazy person puts a play area among a bunch of coconut trees?"

"Oh honey, they cut the coconuts off so the kids won't get hit."

No sooner had she said that then *whomp* a coconut fell inside the play area. It made us both jump.

We have two coconut trees in the yard here. A woman comes with a worker every few weeks to cut the mature fruits off. She pays us a small amount and resells them. That said, we had a pen for piglets in the yard that had a steel roof on it. One night while sitting out on the back patio, drinking, *boom!* a coconut fell, hitting that roof. It was loud to me with my bad ears. No one else paid it any attention.