I heard as a child that foxes love eating watermelon.
I wasn’t a distrusting child, but I wasn’t quite sure about the foxes and watermelon story.
Until I found a big Klondike watermelon completely hollowed out in our watermelon patch when I was about 14 years old. One end was chewed off, with fox teeth marks clearly visible in the rind, and all of the flesh was gone. The shell was as empty as a drum.
I’ve since heard of growers in QLD loosing hundreds of watermelon to foxes. Burp! Weird right? But I believe them.
Later I discovered that foxes love grapes! They are really happy to sample the delights of ripening table or wine grapes, and at times can cause serious spoil and losses in vineyards.
We knew this thousands of years ago by the way. The Hebrew King Solomon included this bucolic tidbit in his ultra romantic (and more than a little risqué) Song of Songs - “Catch us the little foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.”
Sometimes it is the little things that can trip us up and suck the sweetness out of life..
The last 4 weeks or so I have been dragging my tail around. I’ve had some sort of a flu that I can’t shake, maybe due to lingering effects of treatment last year for lymphoma. Such a small thing, but I’ve had no energy or enthusiasm for anything much.
So little enthusiasm that, mid afternoon of that stinking hot Sunday we had back in December, when it was 43º here in the garden, I was ready to retire. First time ever that I thought, “This is too hard!”
I’ve never been one to give up, but that day, feeling so crook, but having to drag myself around keeping the water pump going flat out and the garden irrigation on constant rotation to keep it alive, I thought, “I think I’ve had enough this! The reward for the effort just isn’t there! This is a mugs game…”
I'm sure at times, you too, have also felt a lack of 'sweetness of life'. Beware of the little things (foxes) that try to steal our joy! I’m looking forward to the sweetness of life returning.
Rod