CHOKE CHERRIES: AND, DID ANYONE ASK THE ELEPHANTS?

CHOKE CHERRY: PANICLES OF FLOWERS...

...BARK...

...LARGE SHRUB

Sunday, 9:00 AM.  58 degrees F at the ferry dock, 58 on the back porch.  Wind SSE, calm with occasional very light gusts.  The sky has a high overcast, the humidity is 77%.  The barometer is still falling, now at 29.68".  Expect cool and rainy weather through Monday, then warming and clearing the balance of the week.

   Choke cherry, Prunus virginiana, in the Rose Family,  bears red (purple when fully ripe) berries in abundance.  They are excellent wildlife food and are good for making jams and jellies, but are rather bitter to the taste when eaten raw, and thus their name.  Choke cherry is a common shrub or small tree native to much of the more temperate forested portions of North America, and is a prevalent pioneer plant after forest fires or logging. 

   Several years ago our eldest daughter, who lives in Ohio, sent me a  jar of choke cherry jam from an Amish kitchen for my birthday, and it was delicious.  It is also seen occasionally on grocery store shelves, but it is pretty much a do it yourself project.  Pretty hard to harvest wild berries before the critters get to them, though.

OFF THE CUFF

   Well, the environmental left has done it again;  caused the demise of an American icon, the Ringling Bros.-Barnum and Baily Circus.  No more three ring circus to amaze children and adults alike.  No more death-defying aerial acts or dangerous confrontations with fierce lions and tigers. No more circus clowns.  No more circus parades.  And, of course, no more elephants.

   This was proclaimed a war of liberation, and the overly sensitive and gullible rushed to join the cause.  And as with most such wars, the victors never asked the citizens of the target country what they themselves really wanted.

   In this case, no one asked the elephants, who were the cause celebre and highest profile citizens of circus land.  Of course the elephants, although quite intelligent, do not have the capacity of speech.  But if they could speak, much less vote, on the demise of their "country," would they have perhaps protested just a bit?

   Protested that they had always lived in their circus country, were never wild and wouldn't know a thing about how to live in the jungle, or how to protect themselves from the enemies they would find there.

   That they had many human friends, whom they would miss very much.

   That they had gotten great satisfaction from useful work and its rewards.

   That they loved the applause of the crowds and the music of the bands, and most of all the parades.

   That, since they are intelligent animals,  being in a zoo would  simply bore them to death.

   Now I am sure I will be criticized, or worse, for my political incorrectness, but I do think our leftist friends have once again wreaked havoc on an unsuspecting and innocent country, the circus and its elephants, the latter to whom I can only offer this advice:

   Lawyer up. And start your own protest parade.