Tutti Frutti

Once upon a time, we had peach trees. 

Four of them, at our old house.  The first summer after we put them in, they were weighed down with hundreds of rosy fuzzy fruit.  Sweet and juicy -- they literally tasted like summer. We gorged ourselves for several weeks in as many ways as we could imagine --  peach soup, pies, cobblers, sliced into cereal or yogurt, grilled and drizzled with honey, and simply eaten straight from the tree. As the season ended, I froze several quarts for pies over the winter, and we all looked forward with great anticipation to what we hoped would be even greater bounty the second year.

What we didn't know what that a stringer for the Rodent Report had picked up the scent.  The RR is a sister publication to the Insect Informer, the newsletter that tells tomato hornworms where we've planted the tomatoes each year, lets cutworms know where to find the eggplant, and alerts cabbage moths when the broccoli is ready so they can cover it with their nasty slimy black eggs.  I am not making this up.

In any event, the squirrels got the word and must have spent the entire winter rehearsing.  When the next spring came around, we tended lovingly to our peach trees, watching as the blossoms fell and the fruit emerged, swelled, and headed towards ripeness.  I distinctly remember the lovely summer evening when we strolled out to discover that the peaches were ready, and we talked about harvesting some the next morning to have them fresh for breakfast.  We spoke about this out loud.  Big mistake.  The squirrels' Paul Revere was listening -- and he rode out that very night.

When we emerged the next morning, baskets ready, we saw to our horror that every single peach had been eaten.  Every. Single. Peach. It had been a lightning midnight raid conducted with the efficiency of Navy Seals.  All that was left were several hundred pits littering the ground like so many discarded shell casings.  And I swear we could hear the squirrels laughing at us as we stood there slack-jawed.  I only hope they all had colossal stomach aches.

We spent the next several years locked in mortal combat with these fluffy-tailed rats.   Mr. Mulch, being a Navy man, tried the kind of guards used to keep rats off ships -- round metal collars that wrap, conelike, around the trunk of the tree.  It's the same principle vets use with those cones that keep dogs from chewing on their tail or other more tender body parts.  That did indeed keep the squirrels from climbing up the tree trunks, but they simply switched to an arial assault, flinging themselves at the most heavily laden top peach branches from the taller trees surrounding our poor decimated grove.  Our less-than-genius dogs were no match for clever squirrel tactics... they'd repeatedly chase a designated decoy while the rest of the brood scarfed down fruit.  And I probably shouldn't mention the air rifle.  Suffice it to say the squirrels outnumbered the ammunition.

So eventually, we moved.  Not because of the squirrels, but I do think they waved and clapped their little peach-stained paws as we left the driveway for the last time.

Now relocated, older, and wiser, we still have squirrels.  And we still have fruit trees -- ornamental fruit trees.  They bloom beautifully, but bear no fruit.  And in late April - Early May, they brighten up the early garden with a brief, but glorious display.



Upright Pink Weeping Cherry



Bradford Pear



White Weeping Cherry

 

Black Plum Tree

I'd like to think that the squirrels mistake these for real fruit trees and quiver with anticipation at the promise of future fruit when they see them blooming, only to be shattered by frustration when the trees turn leafy, but barren.  I'd like to think that, but I fear the truth is closer to this: 

They're waiting for the next issue of the Rodent Report to tell them whether or not we're planting corn this year -- and where.