WAVERLY, Va. -- Destiny Buhls and her little sister were missing their cat, Socks.
“Six days,” Destiny said. “One night I was walking down here and I heard it crying. And I came back the next morning and looked up and there he was.”
“There” was up a tree in a yard on Coppahaunk Road, a half mile or so from their house in Waverly, Va. But it wasn’t a little, cat-friendly tree, but a vast, 100-year-old willow oak, its lowest branches almost as tall as the two-story home beside it.
What could these cat-loving girls do?
Swamp Man to the rescue.
Swamp Man -- aka Brian Carr -- is a local legend of sorts.
Why is he called Swamp Man?
“Because I live in a swamp,” he replied.
He’s a skydiver and a tree-worker who started climbing young, clearing power lines. When skydivers find their expensive parachutes snagged high in the trees, who do they call?
Swamp Man.
When scary-tall trees need to be limbed, who do they call?
Swamp Man.
But he charges for those services.
Cats?
“I do cats for free,” he said. “Cause I’m an animal-lover. I’ve got five of my own.”
He’s also got a style of his own.
We all watched in amazement as Swamp Man scurried up the giant oak, grabbed Socks and slid him deftly into a colorful pillowcase and then lowered him quickly but gently into Dentiny’s waiting arms.
He then rappelled 45 feet to the ground in the time it takes to read this sentence -- just as smooth as cat’s nose.
He accepted the girls’ thanks and hugs with a tip of his cap and, “You’re welcome very much. Any time.”
And then he was off his Ford Super Duty pickup truck wearing the plates “IGOJUMP.”
Yup. Swamp Man.
