Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle is home recovering from surgery Monday to repair a tear in his Achilles tendon suffered last weekend while doing yardwork.

And it wasn’t even his yard.

Battle, 67, said Thursday night he was working to clean up a vacant lot across the street from his east Huntsville home when he sustained the injury. The fourth-term mayor said he was stepping on a fallen tree when his foot slipped to the ground. And when it landed, “I could feel the pop.”

“I was trying to do my own neighborhood cleanup across the street from my yard,” Battle said. “And I got a little bit too ambitious, let’s say.”

The situation began, Battle said, when he spied an old tire in the lot that he had been meaning to remove.

“I saw a tire that was on the side of the bank,” he said. “And I’ve been looking at that tire for a long time. I said, ‘I’m going to get that tire because I need to get rid of it.’ Went over there and, to get to the tire, had to step on one log and then step on a second log or tree that was down. I got the tire, got it pulled up and threw it out.

“And then I saw the hubcap and I went for the hubcap and got it. And when I turned around, stepped onto my second log to step back on the ground and my foot just went right off that log. If you remember Saturday, it was a little bit cold and I think it was a little bit icy and when I hit the ground, I could feel the pop and my Achilles had popped.”

The mayor has been out of the office this week on doctor’s orders to keep his leg elevated to help reduce swelling. Battle said he hoped to be back in the office on at least a limited basis next week.

“Now it’s just, you know, six weeks of a cast and six weeks in a boot and rehab after that,” Battle said.

The good news, perhaps, is that Battle said he filled two bags full of garbage from the lot before the injury.

“I’m doing fine,” he said. “It swells up on you. The first couple of weeks, you’re supposed to keep it up as much as you can. So I’m sitting in a chair, trying to keep it up and keep it from swelling right now.”