VANCOUVER, Wash. - A Vancouver homeowner says she is looking into legal action after a next-door neighbor apparently impersonated her and had a towering 100-year-old fir tree cut down on her property without her knowledge.

The homeowner is renting out the property and her tenant, Steve Hawkins, called to tell her that he came home to find one of the trees in the back yard had been cut down by a tree cutting service.

Both Hawkins and the owner, who did not want to be identified, said they gave no one permission to cut the tree down.

KATU News was able to talk to a woman with the service who cut down the tree. She said they received a call to bid on the job and that the $1,700 bid was accepted so they took the tree down as agreed.

The tree cutting company told KATU News the neighbor, Jim Yeager, who could not be contacted by phone and did not answer knocks on his door, posed as the homeowner and paid to have the tree cut down.

He even took the crew into the back yard of the home and showed them which tree to cut down.

"He lied to us," the woman with the tree cutting company said. Crew members were still working on the site when KATU News arrived on the scene. Only a stump and cut sections of the tree remained.

Limbs had already been run through a chipper parked out on the street.

Renter Steve Hawkins was mystified by the neighbor's action. "I just can't imagine somebody thinking somehow that was OK."

The homeowner contacted police who told her it was civil matter. The homeowner told KATU News she was getting legal counsel on the matter.