We live in Florida where there is a lot of lightning striking the trees.  We have actually lost 5 trees in 13 years on our two acres.  We had over 300 trees but we cut them down and only left about 12 scattered on our property grouped in threes.

I buy bark chips for my flower beds.  So when the last tree was hit, we did not immediately cut it down.  The bark started falling off in big chunks.  I collected it and broke into smaller pieces for my beds.

Another benefit of leaving the tree up, the wood peckers love to peck on the dead trees so we enjoyed more birds in our yard.