TACLOBAN CITY (PNF) - At 95, Doroteo de la Cruz, an unschooled peasant living in the fringe of Barangay Caraycaray, three kilometers out of Naval town, the capital of Biliran province, may be the oldest living Filipino in his corner of the world.

But his claim to local fame here is that he is the fearless feller of that myth-filled tree, the balete. Those having trouble in these parts with a balete (Ficus indica), or dakit in Cebuano, they come to Man Tiyong.

As in most Philippine rural areas, the tree is untouchable in Naval because it is believed to be the home of evil and vengeful spirits.

But not to Man Tiyong and his assistants, who wield their axes with little fear. Man Tiyong is invited to as far away as Palompon in northwestern Leyte, and Calbayog in nearby Samar to fell a dakit tree.

You need the help of a village oldtimer to reach him in his weather-beaten house. Man Tiyong's house is on the back row of houses from the highway, about a kilometer away from the gate of the Naval School of Fisheries.

He is partially deaf, and one has to shout questions to him, which his wife Leona, herself in her seventies, shouts a second time for good measure.

Despite his neighbors' fears, Man Tiyong has had very few brushes with disaster or disease. One time, he says, he was hired to cut down a dakit that stood in the way of a proposed barangay road. He says he saw his path blocked by three fist-sized cat-like animals, but he simply ignored them. He finished cutting the tree without any trouble, he says.

Man Tiyong has also been hired to cut down mangroves in swamps turned into fishponds, or dig irrigation canals in haunted grounds for new ricefields.

Neighbors are convinced that Man Tiyong possesses amulets (anting-anting). He denies this, though. But Leona admits that Man Tiyong leaves a special bottle of water whenever he is on his dakit-cutting missions. Leona explained that she is told to drink from it for protection.

Though hard of hearing, a regular tobacco leaf-puffer, and a defiant dakit-cutter, Man Tiyong remains hale and hearty. Indeed, at 95, he expects to live two or three decades more, like his own mother and father who lived to reach 135 and 130 years, respectively.

According to Leona, Man Tiyong's father Julian de la Cruz was still a child when taken captive by Muslims to Dapitan town in Zamboanga. There he grew up as an adult and married Josefa Abada, a Muslim, whom he then took back to Naval. They eventually had 12 children. The only two living today are Man Tiyong, and the youngest, Maria, now 90, and residing in another barangay here.

(Since the last three recorded Muslim raids in Naval happened in the decade of the 1830s, Julian who may have been five years old when captured, say in 1835, must have been 130 years old when he died in 1965.)

Man Tiyong expects he still has quite a few years ahead of him, if he takes after his parents. To keep the blood warm and running, he and his wife drink up half a gallon of tuba (coconut wine) every day. They live on very simple fare, cassava and other root crops when rice is scarce, and fish.

And he intends to cut dakit until he is able to do so. "It's only a tree," says Man Tiyong.

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