|The snag -- a canyon live oak.| If hollow trees were sentient
beings, they would cringe when they see me coming. You see, the
codger regularly administers an examination of hollow trees that
resembles a colonoscopy. |Looking up from the bottom.| It's a
harmless procedure for tree and examiner, though there's a
remote risk that something inside might clamp down on your arm
during the examination. All you do is stick your handheld camera
into the cavity, point it upward, press the shutter release, and
check the resulting image on the LCD. Most of the time the
cavity is shallow and filled with rotten wood and spider webs.
The conjoined trunks of this oak however measured 12 feet
around, and both were hollow and free of spider webs, indicating
that furry mammals used it regularly. |Looking down from the top
-- a distance of 11 feet.| One trunk had a capacious space that
tapered upwards and extended into the limbs. The cavity opened
to the outside 11 feet up, where a limb had snapped off some
years ago. There was