Grapefruit

I was walking along this morning and came upon a grapefruit lying under the grapefruit tree. I paused and looked at it and thought well that’s not really ripe enough to have just fallen off but I didn’t think that much more about it and put it in a container to take back up to the house. Was working on several things, and maybe 2 or 3 hours later I started heading back up the path to the house and saw a grapefruit rolling along.

Looked again and saw the ground squirrel behind it pushing it as fast as it could go. Now the grapefruit certainly outweighed the ground squirrel. It looked like someone trying to roll a 55 gallon drum along the ground. I kept walking and the ground squirrel tried to go faster. I was getting closer, it was trying to go faster. Finally it ran for the bush and the grapefruit rolled to a stop. I picked up the grapefruit and put it with the other one and went to look at something and about 5 minutes later saw the ground squirrel run for the grapefruit tree. Now the tree is not very big so the lower branches are only about 2 feet off the ground. Well the ground squirrel leaped up and grabbed the lower branch, wiggled up in the tree, and worked around, and worked around, and worked around, and finally a small grapefruit fell out of the tree, followed by the ground squirrel. This fruit was only about the size of a small orange. And so the ground squirrel grabbed it in its teeth and ran off, holding it off the ground instead of rolling it.

The image of that poor ground squirrel rolling along the giant grapefruit and trying to go faster was definitely worth the price of the smaller fruit later.

I am perfectly happy to share with the critters. Pretty darn cheap entertainment when you think about it. Cracks me up when people buy bird seed to feed the birds but they hate it if anything else gets it. And they throw a fit if the birds eat any of the fruit from their 1 fruit tree. While they’ve planted 5 other fruitless trees (fruitless mulberry, a fruitless olive, a fruitless pear, fruitless this and fruitless that). Cause the fruit gets in the way when it falls :-( And they will plant a lemon tree. They probably will only use at most 5 lemons in a year but by god at least the squirrels won’t steal their fruit. It will instead, just lie under the tree all summer. Geez Louise people — grow up :-)