Is this stealing? [View All]

My wife says yes, I say no. Looking for input.

Last weeks storms here in California blew over a good-sized ash tree near my office. The city crews came out, chopped the tree into some manageable sized chunks, and dragged the resulting pile into the median along the curb, where it now sits waiting for another city hauling crew to pick it up. I took one look at that big chopped up tree and thought FIREWOOD! There's at least two (and probably more) cords of wood there, and I just paid $95 a cord a couple of months ago.

So I called the city tree division and asked their phone person whether I could take it. After putting me on hold for 20 minutes while asking around, the person came back and told me this: "For your safety, we ask the public to avoid city brush and debris piles. People have been injured in them before." That's all fine and dandy, but it wasn't a yes or a no...and personally I'm not all that concerned with my safety in this case. I've taken trees down before and cut them into firewood, so relocating already-cut chunks of the wood into my trailer isn't really an issue.

So I told my wife that, absent a NO from the city, I'm taking my trailer over tonight to load it up. My wife freaked out, said it's stealing, and is afraid I'm going to get arrested. Her position is that it's not my tree, not my property, and therefore there is no legal way for me to take it without written permission.

My position is that it's a publicly owned tree that fell in a public space, has been cut by a government employee for easy transport, and is now sitting alongside a public roadway in a public median. If I, as a member of the public, want to load up some of that debris and take it home, how is that stealing?

So who's right?