Ogilvie Originals

I can tell you exactly when that came to be:
In my youth I like’d climbing trees. This is fine, I suppose if you do it once in a while. I guess most people climb a tree at least once a year, but I usually end up in a tree at least once a day in some way or other.
I particularly liked climbing maple trees. You can get quite a ways up in a maple tree you know, - the view can be rather exceptional at times. But anyway, I would climb this tree – I had a favourite tree – and I would sit up there for an hour or two watching people walk underneath. People really look different if you view them from the top.
When I was younger – (this “habit” can be traced a ways back ) – I would sit up there in any tree for a while and have quite a good time, but after a couple of hours even that got boring, so as a result I turned to different ways of having fun. I began to spit on people who walked under and then just as a safety precaution I would whistle like a bird. (You see you can pick up some useful tricks by hanging out in a tree for a couple hours a day). But anyway this protected me from being discovered because if you’re under a tree and suddenly you feel this wet deposit and then hear a bird you don’t have to look up to see what that might be. IN fact you have a pretty good idea and you really don’t want to look up because you’re afraid you may get a second missile landing in your face.

So you see I felt pretty safe up there in that tree. But as fate would have it eventually I was discovered. I had a friend, (once,) and I thought maybe he’d like to see how I spent my time so the two of us climbed up into my favourite tree and I showed him all the different fun things you can do to amuse yourself in a tree.
However my friend left to go home before I did, Actually he fell. I forgot he wouldn’t be as sure footed as I was and he slipped, bounced from a few limbs and then ran home crying. (remember – I was just a youngster)

Well that would have been fine but unfortunately he had a mother and she wanted to know just on earth why he was up in a tree. The story quickly spread through the neighbourhood. The dirty bird in the tree was really me. People began avoiding walking under the tree and I soon became bored with the lack of activity.

This caused a little soul searching on my part. (I was fairly introspective in my younger days) I was born in Ottawa, moved to Burlington before I knew that I was living in Ottawa but shortly after knew that I was in Burlington and we lived in 3 different homes in Burlington before moving out into the country out outside of a small village known as Freelton and then after about 8 or 9 years we moved to Carlisle which was just another village a few miles from Freelton and then right there – you remember I was doing some soul searching  -  I decided that I could apply this lesson to the present situation and I did. I moved into another tree. And it wasn’t a maple either.

Well people were still avoiding the old tree and they didn’t know I had moved so they didn’t worry about walking under the new tree I had chosen so I had lots of unsuspecting people to spit on. I was pretty accurate by this time too and remembering the lesson I learned I even changed my bird whistle.

This went along successfully for quite a while, but then one day as I was climbing up my tree I found a small box wrapped and tied with a pretty ribbon and on the box was a little card that was addressed to the “the tree dweller." I 'd been situated in this tree for about seven weeks now and I hadn’t seen anyone else in the tree so I figured that the package was intended for me. I opened it to find a nice big juicy dew worm in the box and it was then I realized I had to get out of that tree. When I got to the bottom a couple of people who knew me saw me jump down and right away one of them said ”Look – he’s out of his tree!”

Well for the next 3 or four weeks everyone who saw me would wait until I was some distance from them and then they would turn and say to each other ”he’s really out of his tree.”  It was a little more polite than actually saying “he’s the crazy kid always up in the tree”
Today this expression is still used by anyone referring to someone else who be might be  thought of as being just a little odd and it all started with my being up in a tree.