Pear Dogs
Posted on April 30, 2015 by bob in OffTheBeatenPath
I first noticed it last summer while mowing the lawn. The pear tree in our backyard seemed to be dropping leaves – which happens every year – except it was unseasonably early. Was it the heat, or maybe a gust of wind, since several branches lay scattered around the base of the tree as well? I daydreamed briefly of pear cobbler and strengthened my resolve to ensure the delicious green fruit on the tree survived to maturity. I ran the hosepipe out to the tree, let it run for 10 minutes, stepped back to quench my own thirst and pondered the mystery. Bella and Coco panted patiently at my side.
Every day before work the next week I watered the tree for a few minutes to see if the growing clutter of leaves and branches piling up around its base would diminish. To my disappointment, they didn’t. I was stumped, because the tree otherwise looked healthy. One morning not too long thereafter, I was staring out the kitchen window into the backyard at the pear tree, scratching my head about this strange problem when I saw Coco, sitting beneath the tree, seemingly pondering the same issue with equal intensity. Bella lay a few feet away, sunning.
I started to turn away but movement caught my eye. To my great surprise, Coco leaped straight up into the branches of the tree, snag a pear, a foot of branch and a cluster of leaves in her teeth. Her back feet must have cleared the ground by three feet. She snuck away, pear in mouth, trying to evade the suddenly interested Bella.
I chuckled as I watched her chomp down on that hard green pear and then turn back to the tree, get a running start and rocket up into its branches after another. Seeing her daughter’s achievement, Bella attempted the same, but without the same success. She tried once more, then sulked away to sun herself. When Coco went to snag another, two pears fell and Bella pounced on one, happily carrying it back to her sunny patch to enjoy.
Sally and I laughed about our pair of pear eaters, though it wasn’t much of a shock given their usual antics. Besides being fine hunting dogs in their own right, they have also rid our section of the neighborhood of possums and are adept at wrangling up shad on fishing trips.
For the rest of the summer Coco worked every side of that tree pulling down pears, with Bella waiting in anticipation for the telltale thud in the grass of green fruit hitting the ground.
When the pears finally ripened, nearly every fruit within seven feet of the ground had already been harvested by Coco. There weren’t more than a few I could reach without the aid of a step ladder. But despite Coco’s best efforts we still managed a few pear pies from her leftovers.
After the leaves fell last fall, Coco still eyed the tree every time she walked by. More than once I caught her sitting beneath its bare branches gazing longingly upward. When the leaves reappeared this spring there was an extra spring in her step. The pears are now golf-ball sized, and at the tree’s base, fallen leaves and branches have ‘mysteriously’ begun reappearing.
Niko Corley, a licensed charter boat captain, spends as much of his free time as possible on the water or in the woods. He can be contacted at niko.corley@gmail.com.
