Berry Pickin' Punk

Every July I look forward to picking the black raspberries that grow around my home. I like to have them with cereal in the morning and sometimes over vanilla ice cream. With coffee, naturally.

And every July I have to fight the birds for the black raspberries, especially the blue jays, who are the bullies of the yard bird world. But nothing will dissuade a berry lover like me. I pick them every morning for two weeks or more before they run out. It's the best two weeks of the summer for me.

Yesterday I had to, once again, flush out a squawking blue jay from the first berry patch. He didn't like it one damn bit when I called him a "berry-pickin' punk" but he left. I filled a styrene cup half full of lovely black raspberries and, after rinsing them in cold water, I enjoyed them over my multi-grain breakfast cereal. With coffee, of course.

The next day as I approached the berry patch with my empty cup and a big, bullying blue jay started giving me grief, I had a revelation. As if by some miracle, I was suddenly able to translate this noisy, wild bird's angry, squawking protest. I was dumbfounded. But only for a moment.

"You berry-pickin' punk!" it said to me in loud, blue jay squawks.

Touché, I said to myself, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of knowing that I'd been dutifully chided and that I'd gotten the big picture. The sad, awful truth wasn't easy to swallow but I took my medicine. Here it turned out that, after all these years, I was the berry-pickin' punk all along.