A Strange Field Trip For A Foraging Tree

[Allee]

I know most people would probably just go out and purchase a play stand for their parrots but not me, I like to make things more difficult if it all possible. Yesterday I found an opportunity to do just that. Popeye, my U2 has needed a play stand for a couple of months. He's become quite the explorer and now that he's discovered the floor, he can't stay off of it.

I've been shopping for a foraging tree for weeks and haven't found anything I'm wild about. Yesterday, I was heading out the door and got a phone call that changed my plans for the day. Left with a couple of free hours I decided to follow up on an idea that I've been working on for a while. I went to a local business in my tiny town and met a delightful artist. He makes furniture, lamps, cutting boards, jewelry, etc. All his products are mesquite wood. The man and his daughter showed me around and the three of us had an in depth discussion about mesquite wood. I told him what I was looking for and showed him Popeye's photo. He insisted on taking me to his farm and the source of his mesquite wood. He let me choose my own tree and trimmed off the branches I didn't want with a chain saw. I came back with a six foot dead mesquite tree, guaranteed to have never been sprayed with anything. It's been baking in the sun for a couple of years. Now that I have it home, I'm having an attack of paranoia over how to clean and sanitize it. I am thinking I will remove all the dead bark, scrub the day lights out of it with dish soap and hot water, then take it to a car wash and blast it with high pressure and more hot water, then bring it home, put it in the bathtub and douse it with boiling water. Does that sound right or should I ditch the whole project for safety's sake, pretend I'm normal and buy Popeye a ready made stand? If I can figure out this part of my plan, I have amazing ideas for the foraging tree. Mom says it won't matter, Popeye is so emotional when he sees the tree he'll go into his cockatoo vapor lock state and won't speak for a month. If you're still reading and see something wrong with my idea or know a better way to disinfect the wood, please don't hesitate to let me know. My husband who is home only on weekends is laughing from a safe distance and to be helpful he confessed to borrowing my power tools without permission and promised to return them.

 

[Terry57]

What an adventure you had yesterday!
I am so glad you ended up finding one that will work
I have no idea what steps to take to make sure it is safe, but I know that lots of people on here do this and I am sure one will pop up with an answer It sounds like what you have planned would definitely work!
And why is Joe borrowing your power tools? As a fee for that, he needs to come right on home this weekend and work all weekend with you on Popeye's new stand!

I think it will take Popeye some time to get used to it, but then i bet he is going to love it as much as he loves his swing you made for him

 

[jenphilly]

We are in the same process but using wild birch

Get yourself GSE (grapefruit seed extract), its an excellent source for killing lots of bacteria and such. You don't want to over saturate too much, because of expansion and cracking. Any chance you know anyone who does ceramics or such, have a large oven? Or if you have access to a sauna, you can heat steam the crap out of it and it will kill anything and everything.

We put all the smaller parts we were using into the oven and 'baked' them on low temp (set it right at 200). The large center piece I scrubbed down and then scrubbed it with GSE twice. It also had been out in the freezing Wisconsin winter, so chances of anything surviving between freezing temps and cleaning with GSE is slim and none.

Be careful with boiling water or anything too hot, the wood could split. You only need to hit like 160 to kill anything that is a worry.