A group of Fairlie firefighters who attempted to dislodge a road cone from the top of a tree by blasting water at it, are set to be charged by police for cruelty against the cone, which remains stuck in the 50-metre high tree.
The cone, which found itself trapped after realising it had climbed too far up the tree, and didn’t know how to get down, drew the attention of the town’s residents, who have tried various methods to rescue it, to no avail.
That was until several local firefighters took matters into their own hands, brutally spraying the cone with a high-pressured fire hose, a matter that’s now under investigation.
One of the firefighters involved, Marcus Dixon, said he was “deeply apologetic” for the distress their actions had caused.
“We just assumed the cone had been attempting to off itself, and we wanted to, you know, help it along,” he explained, adding that he would fully cooperate with police. “Obviously it’s still there, so it probably doesn’t want to die. Our mistake.”
Dixon explained that the usual methods used to remove cats and other animals from trees would not work here, as the cone had climbed “far out of reach.”
“Cones have the capacity to climb a lot higher than cats and dogs and turtles, and that sort of thing,” he said, “which is why you often see them in high places.”
Philanthropist and long-time anti-cone campaigner Gareth Morgan has weighed in on the firefighter’s actions, saying that people are “too sentimental,” and that cones are a pest that “threaten native signage.”