The Peach Raper

There is another Peach Raper on the loose.  It is true!  (Please refer to last year post on the first Peach Raper.  You’ll see that peaches are important to me, and I need my peaches and cream!)   It happened again this year and my children will now go peachless for the next 12 months since I’m too cheap to pay $40 a bushel for peaches.  OK-I lied.  I stopped at the fruit stand Tues. and bought a half bushel of the most beautiful peaches on the planet. I had to since my muther has no peaches, and what is Sept. without those lovely, tasty, wonderful peaches?  I must make a Makita Fresh Peach Pie too.  They’re just so tasty!

Frequently throughout the summer I ask my mom how her peaches are doing.  We get the report on the spring frost, if the blossoms fared well, how well the branches are holding up, if my dad did a good job of thinning, and everything else in between.  About the beginning of Aug. we received the ghastly news.  There is a new Peach Raper in town and he had done his job.  Out under each of the peach trees was a lovely little pile of peach pits, but not a peach to be seen.  Someone or something had eaten all those peaches.  Way before they’re ripe I may add.  My youngest brother and his wife witnesses the criminal.  A large ferocious Rock Chuck or more aptly named the “Yellow Bellied Marmot”  (Wikipedia told me that info.)  If you heard Eric talk about the little varmint you would think Eric is lucky to be alive.  “It was enormous!  It would eat your face off if you got to close to it’s peaches!”  That’s what he said and I believe him.

My dad did his best to capture the villain, but to no avail.  He instead trapped the neighbors cat, a magpie, and finally a skunk.  The skunk was the final straw.  The little yellow bellied varmint could have the peaches.  (Actually he already had, so I’m not sure it mattered.) And we will all starve.   Really though, I hope that Rock Chuck died of the most horrible tummy ache on the planet.  I’m sure he did!