[Times photos: John Pendygraft]
The Golden Girls of Pinecrest - from left, Jackie Rothman, Helen Tyler, Bobbie Jean Tyler and Sally Cameron - held cutting crews at bay with a legal appeal and several acts of civil disobedience.

By THOMAS C. TOBIN

MIAMI -- For days, the air was thick with the clamor of chain saws and stump grinders and big trucks, rumbling up and down the road with their payloads of sweet, freshly hacked citrus branches.

This orange shows the pockmarks on its skin caused by citrus canker.

Soon they'd be returning to the home of sisters Bobbie Jean and Helen Tyler and their longtime housemates, Jackie Rothman and Sally Cameron. Around the south Miami-Dade community of Pinecrest the four were known as the "Golden Girls," old friends in their 60s and 70s who managed to repel the cutting crews for a week with a $250 legal appeal and several acts of civil disobedience.

They locked the driveway gate and blocked the entrance with their cars. Later, when they linked arms with 35 neighbors and sang God Bless America, the police walked away.

But on Oct. 26, with nothing left in their bag of miracles, the Golden Girls were forced to say goodbye.

Forty-five minutes before the trucks and the chain saws arrived, they joined hands around each of the five trees slated for destruction -- the key lime tree, the lemon-lime tree, the sour orange tree, the Persian lemon tree that gave two quarts of juice on its final day, and the prize pink grapefruit tree that was plucked each morning for breakfast.

All more than 35 years old and healthy, each got its own ceremony.

"We blessed the tree and gave it our gratitude for all the fruit it had given us over the many years," said Bobbie Jean Tyler, 63, a retired teacher and businesswoman. "We each put our hands on the tree and each one of us thanked the tree in our own way and blessed the spirit of the tree and more or less explained to the tree what was going to happen, and that we were there to support it."

And then, in a flurry of noise and sawdust, they were history, joining 670,000 other residential trees in Miami-Dade and Broward counties that have been felled -- some say sacrificed -- as part of a controversial program to halt the spread of citrus canker.

State officials say they are trying to save Florida's $8.5-billion citrus industry, which employs 140,000 people and generates millions for the state budget. But the program has brought harm to another constituency -- tens of thousands of South Floridians who have a unique bond with their backyard trees.

With all the raw feelings, words like "jack-booted" and "Gestapo," and "fascist" get tossed around with gusto. Some say, only half-joking, that Florida should replace the orange on its license plates with the image of a chain saw.

What confounds people most is that healthy trees must die along with the infected ones -- as many as 100,000 more by the end of the year.

Victims of geography, the Golden Girls' trees were considered "exposed" because they stood within 1,900 feet of a single diseased tree down the block. The state contends the canker would have found them sooner or later, contributing to an outbreak that, in the words of one official, would "spread like wildfire" if left unchecked.

Canker is a bacterial disease that causes leaves and fruit to drop prematurely from citrus trees and leaves them pockmarked with brown, raised lesions. It spreads with wind, rain and the movements of animals and humans.

After the crews had gone from the Golden Girls' yard, "there were many tears," said Tyler, who explained the depth of her passion: "You might find this strange," she began, "but my feeling is that a tree is a living, breathing thing."

The eradication program has collided with backyard rituals unique to Florida. Many have lost citrus trees that served as memorials to dead relatives; others miss the backyard fruit they saw as an irreplaceable part of Florida living. But most have been moved to action by the larger concern of property rights.

At a tense public hearing Thursday night, Craig Myers, the state's deputy agriculture commissioner, conceded the program was harsh, but added there was no other way to control canker. He admitted to an irritated panel of Broward County legislators that his department had stumbled, primarily by failing to provide enough public information after the 5-year-old program went into high gear in March.

On that, he got no argument from the lawmakers or the crowd of more than 200 people. Many of them said they've been victimized by rude state inspectors who fail to provide proper documentation, and by cutting crews who barge into back yards using threats and trickery, damaging fences and threatening pets as they go.

"I'm in mourning for my trees, and I'm in mourning for the death of my civil rights," said Clive Lazarus, one of many Broward residents at the Thursday hearing who heckled Myers.

Adding to the tension is a disparity many residents consider unjust: While each affected property owner is given a token $100 voucher to buy replacement trees or garden supplies, the cutters are paid $100 per tree.

Like the Golden Girls, many residents are fighting back.

A Plantation man stalled workers by climbing his grapefruit tree, refusing to come down until police came.

Two men were arrested in separate incidents for threatening cutting crews with guns.

A Miami man holding a copy of the U.S. Constitution let loose his four dogs behind his front gate as crews approached.

Last week at a private elementary school in Kendall, the owner was charged with misdemeanor battery after a deputy held her wrists. She was shouting at a cutting crew for failing to wait for her lawyer.

When these and other stories are told, South Florida residents speak in tones that go beyond mere anger and straight into outrage. Their ire is directed at Agriculture Commissioner Bob Crawford, Gov. Jeb Bush and "Big Citrus."

Organized efforts are under way to boycott Florida citrus products and recall Bush.

State Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Weston Democrat who heads the Broward County Legislative Delegation, called for a special session in Tallahassee to address the crisis. Crawford and Bush had overstepped their bounds, she charged. "It's the Legislature's responsibility to make sure we rein them back in."

Meanwhile, several local governments have sued to stop the cutting. The latest lawsuit challenges the studies used by Crawford as justification. It also asks a judge to strike a fairer balance between the rights of the citrus industry and South Florida residents.

"The citrus growers are being saved, and we're being sacrificed," said Carolyn Seligman, one of several Broward residents listed as plaintiffs. "It's a crock."

Feeling stung, growers stepped forward last week to point out that Crawford's program has also destroyed 800,000 canker-infected grove trees.

"We don't like it either," said Andy LeVigne, executive vice president of Florida Citrus Mutual, a trade group representing 11,500 growers. "We have some growers who have lost their livelihoods."

The average grower in the group tends 125 acres, LeVigne told Broward legislators. "We're not talking land barons here."

After two previous outbreaks of canker in the 20th century, the bacteria was discovered in 1995 near Miami International Airport, sparking the current eradication program.

The state tried cutting all branches and leaves from infected trees, but that didn't work, Myers said. Then, based on studies at the University of Florida, officials tried a program to destroy all citrus trees -- even healthy ones -- within 125 feet of an infected tree. That method "failed miserably," Myers said, as the bacteria spread farther than anyone predicted.

Then, a new study predicted a 95 percent chance of success with the destruction of all citrus trees within 1,900 feet of any infected tree. Fearing the spread of canker into Central Florida and beyond, Crawford approved the expanded cutting zone in March.

Workers for three private landscaping companies buzzed with new vigor, raising South Florida's civic temperature as the summer and fall wore on.

An estimated 285,000 households have been affected. Officials hope the cutting will give way by year's end to a two-year period of monitoring.

Many residents and local officials question the state's study and the seriousness of canker itself. With some support from a handful of retired scientists, they contend canker is a cosmetic problem that doesn't dramatically affect the industry and shouldn't warrant such drastic measures.

Indeed, the disease is not harmful to humans and damaged fruit can safely be used for juice. But Myers and Crawford have said its effects can be devastating, weakening trees and causing severely diminished crops over time.

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