Ghost of Midnight

Pear Predation near Plainfield

What a fine neighborhood we live in, and what a fine, smart service is this new way of combining and circulating information that Front Porch Forum has become.

I put out a query on Sunday about the astonishing disappearance, overnight, I think, of the considerable remainder of the finest pear crop ever on our oldest tree. I dismissed the idea of a human taker because of the obscure location of the tree, and the considerable height of it, 25 feet, I would guess, from which every last pear had been taken, top to bottom. The responses came in quickly, 8 or so, with suggestions & hypotheses: crows took them, or raccoons, turkeys, woodchucks, moose, hunters wanting to bait deer, and maybe a Drone.

The crow theorists had the most decisive evidence: they had themselves seen crows ransacking pear trees, dramatically.

So as far as our family is concerned, the crows have it… and had them, the pears.

“Crows” and “thieves” are words joined in my mind. I try to push that identification away. The idea of “thief” is an altogether human artifact. Crows do genuinely what comes naturally to them. They’re natural opportunists.

And they were here first, besides. We planted our pear trees on their ancestral land.

We shouldn’t plant our epithets on them, as well; although I do.

• Jules, Marshfield-Plainfield FPF