Taxi...

There comes a time in winter when the berries of vintage murder mystery wine come to pleasantness. They sit in clusters coloring the otherwise drab hardwood forest or along the banks of creeks in shadow and ripen slowly, hanging distasteful until that moment when other foodstuffs have been exhausted in the search for sustenance. Now is the time for oversized birds to hang in the tips of dogwoods, too large to be adequately supported by the smallest twigs which carry the deep burgundy berries. Sapsuckers, robins, and others perch among the limbs discussing the fruits like ladies at a tea twittering to themselves...

"Well...This certainly is no Boursin, but once you get past the aroma, you know...And it seems to go well with a bit of pear and lemon...umm...Not the most delightful tidbit, but interesting, eh?"

They won't eat but a couple before they leave. No gorging to be done here. It is difficult work, hanging out at the very end of a twig, dancing about as the twig and morsel bounce under the weight of the modern dinosaur.

Consider the irony: A four ounce descendant of a cousin of Tyrannosaur, right there above my deck chair, eating the berry from a tree that has waited until now to become palatable, insuring for itself the best chances of mobility to a likely spot for germination, growth, and resumption of the cycle of life. At other times there is too much food to choose from, and the distasteful fruit would simply fall to the earth underneath its mother/father onto ground already tapped for the essential nutrients required of that particular plant. New ground is best, and the seed rides the dinosaur taxi to new real estate and is dropped off, literally, with a nice deposit of starter nutrients...repayment of a sort. Self serving in the long run for the dinosaur and its own descendants. Some future winter's meal, prepared by this feathered farmer, will serve its children a decade hence.

The trees grown from seeds that are planted now will nourish our children...Or not. Who foresaw the incredible damage to our Nation that a simple thing like eliminating the "Fairness Doctrine" from our media would have? The worst thing about today's situation is not that we have ceded our Nation's morality to corportions, but that we ourselves prepared the ground for our own destruction as a free country.

Can we be thoughtful enough to plant the proper seeds for our children's future?

I'm betting on it!

Peace,

Steve