The Usual Suspects

It was quite a scene, it really was. Gasps. Acks. Arrghs. All at once gardeners were cursing at the sky. 

Why, why! My tomatoes! Every ripe one. Every single one! Who, what, could have done this? Soon the voices of prejudice were calling out over garden boundaries, down weedy alleys, pitchforks were raised.

Rabbits. It was the rabbits. I know it was, my strawberries were nibbled in June. I see them here all the time.

At first I thought it was bugs, but could it have been the opossum? 

It's friggin raccoons, man. Raccoons are all over the place. They got little hands.

It's those people going to the beach, comin in here. All those hipsters from Brooklyn!

But they ate only part of the tomatoes, it wasn't people! -one gardener rebuked. I don't know -said another.

No one, this time, uttered rats, but I was waiting for it.

Everyone, please, try to calm down -today we lost a lot of tomatoes, and it hurts, we're in pain.

But we can't go throwing accusations around, can we? We need to think about what happened here. As upsetting as it is, we need to look at those tomatoes. What four-legger would do this? 

Rabbit teeth! No, I don't think so, look how the holes are uneven. Don't they look like ovals or diamond shapes? Like a bird beak pecking at a tomato? Birds, why would birds do this, why would they eat half a tomato? I don't know, but its hard for me to imagine an animal getting to every tomato, yet not plucking any from the vine. Birds have an eye for color and they can fly in, any height. 

It's true, I put up a fence after I noticed the damage on Sunday, and the fence wasn't touched at all. Let's observe the birds now that it's dusk. They're everywhere -Mockingbirds, Redwing Blackbirds, Starlings, Robins all about, appearing so innocent. We think they're here for the bugs and seeds, we don't even see them.

I stood utterly still, watching them watch me. They're smart -they would just sit there as long as I was watching. But, within a few minutes I found myself on the trail of a couple of Mockingbirds, hopping through my neighbor's tomatoes, looking for the ripe, the untouched. They noticed me, hopped, then flew around to my tomato plants. They spotted my pile of pecked tomatoes and attacked. Then, off to another plot, to reek more havoc where little survived the last two days of onslaught. Birds. Never given them much thought. And now, I'll need to buy bird netting, or pick every tomato at first blush.

They're pickin my zucchini I tell you! All those lousy people, from the ferry! One lady, she was in here, goin plot to plot, pickin whatever she felt. Sose I axed her, hey lady whatcha doin? And she says she's havin a dinner pardy, and needs some fresh vegetables. Getataheeuh!