Aidin and Gaven Freeland, 10-year-old twins from South Kitsap, run down a path in their back yard to get to a treehouse that their dad, a landscape architect, built for them.

The treehouse is constructed around a giant, ancient tree, and the twins can climb up into it on ivy ropes, tree branches, or with a removable ladder.

It sits about 20 feet in the air with a balcony, windows and a view of the Puget Sound.

But Kitsap County officials have said the structure is illegal and dangerous, and they need to tear it down.

“Are you going to have to get a permit for every treehouse in this county?” asked the twins’ mother, Gabrielle Freeland.

Technically, the answer is, ‘yes,’ said Jeff Hornbaker, assistant director of the county’s Department of Community Development.

“They define a structure as anything built, and then say that some things are exempt,” he said.

The county doesn’t often prosecute kids building a small treehouse, he said, but this is no small treehouse.

“This is not what Norman Rockwell drew as a couple of kids building a tree fort,” he said. “It’s to the point that I think it’s unsafe.”

And a neighbor complained about it.

“I can’t see what it’s doing to her,” said Gabrielle Freeland. “The tree limbs are higher than the treehouse.”

This isn’t the first time she’s complained about the Freelands.

“She sent us a letter from an animal society saying that there could be racoon feces in the treehouse, so it could be dangerous,” said Freeland. “She’s tried everything. This worked.”

The Freelands pay about $6,000 per year in property taxes for their house, on the same property, said Freeland.

For that price, she feels like it’s fair for her husband to build a treehouse in the back yard, and for her kids to play in it if that’s what they’d like to do.

She tried unsuccessfully to have kids for six years, and she wouldn’t let them play in the treehouse if she thought there was any chance that they could get hurt, she added.

But Hornbaker visited the treehouse and met with the Freelands and their lawyer, and he’s honestly concerned that the the kids could get hurt, he said.

“I would sooner be skewered alive in the press,” he said, “than make the wrong decision and have someone get hurt by it.”

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