Bonsai Gone Bad

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that some workers were trimming butchering some trees in front of a house down the street, where my friend, Karin, used to live.  I made a mental note to email Karin and tell her the sad story.  I forgot to do that, but that's beside the point.  About an hour-and-a-half later, my doorbell rang.  When I opened the door and saw the workers standing there, I gasped out loud and said, "Oh, no!" right to their face.  The man who appeared to be in charge (I deduced this from the fact that he wasn't wearing Dickies and he sat, checking his Crackberry the whole time), said, "We trim tree" and gestured to the great big, beautiful Banyan tree that we have in our front yard.  You might remember it from my very first blog post ever:

It shaded the house perfectly in the evenings and shaded my Impatients all day long.  Plus, it housed many a creature of God.  I really loved that tree, except for two things: taxi drivers always missed our house because the tree blocked the house number from being seen from the street, and ants easily moved from the tree to the house and found an entrance through our playroom window.  So, when the man told me "We trim tree," I thought this could be a chance to fix those two things.  He gestured and told me "We only cut here" and he gestured to the part that hung over the sidewalk leading from the street to the door.  That would actually also be helpful for us because the sidewalk has to be pressure-washed twice a year, due to the tree.  I said "OK" and told him we really liked the shade, but that getting it away from that part of the sidewalk would help with the mold and the ants.  I left them to work and looked out the window 30 minutes later.  Here is what my tree looks like now:

It's so sad.  It pisses me off every single time I pull into the driveway.  I simply cannot understand how the discussion we had about how they were going to "trim" the tree turned into this.  The only thing I can think is that it's like when you tweeze your eyebrows.  You just keep plucking until they both match, and that only happens when you've basically left nothing.  It's like an episode of "Bonsai Gone Bad" or something.  And the worst part?  I can't do anything about it, because it's not my house and it's not my yard and it's not my tree.  All I can do is vent to you about it, so that's what I'm going to do because it makes me feel better.  Stupid tree butchers.