Free high protein, organic cherries ...

Several years ago, before I started using Kootenay Covers, I had a wonderful Bing cherry tree in my backyard. Most years it grew a great crop of huge delicious dark purple cherries. I ate as many as I could before the cherry maggots started showing up in the cherries. I would then split open the cherry, take out the wriggling 1/8 inch long maggot and eat the cherry. High-protein low-carb diets were the rage at the time. Everyone was going "organic." I thought to myself, as a joke, it is such a waste to have this excellent source of protein growing right here in my backyard cherries. But I didn't eat very many cherries without splitting them open first.

Then the idea hit me, I should take some to my office and share the joke with my co-workers!  I picked a large bowl of beautiful cherries (each one with a very noticeable little maggot hole in it), printed up a sign that read, "Free, High Protein, Organic Cherries!" I placed the lovely bowl full of cherries on a table near my cubicle. The table was frequently used for food and produce sharing in our large high-tech office. I put my sign right next to the cherries. Our office was located in an agricultural area. I thought people would get the joke. Lots of people had backyard cherry trees that were full of maggots, just like mine.

Throughout the day people would pass by my free cherries and laugh. They liked my joke. Many of them knew to open the cherry, take out the maggot and eat the cherry. Others just knew they should avoid those cherries.

Near the end of the day, however, I hear one of co-workers yell out from several rows away from my desk, "Wilson, I'm gonna kill you!" A co-worker originally from the eastern US, did not get the joke. He had eaten several handfuls of cherries, protein and all. Then someone explained to him what the sign really meant and showed him a maggot in the cherries on his desk.

We are much older and wiser now. He is fine. He still works there. I retired from that company years ago. I am really sorry. Honest.