Mulberries and Murders

I needed to research trees. Or more specifically, wood that was suitable for carving. Research never fails to send me on detours, and this time was no exceptions.

Here we go ‘round the mulberry bush…

Mulberry bush? As a child I sang that song. I’d never seen a mulberry tree, let alone a bush or even a mulberry. All I knew was thatevery year, the teachers would ask if anyone had a mulberry so we’d have a source of leaves for the silk worms.
For all the years we had silk worms in our classroom, I don’t recall a single success with the science experiment/experience. Weird creamy white worms undulated around, got lost in limp leaves, and nary a silk cocoon ever materialized.

Then we moved into this house 23 years ago. The house across the street has a ginormous tree out along the parkway. The branches block out the streetlights and the roots have made the sidewalk and curb buckle. But those features pale in significance to the real fact: It’s a mulberry. Forget the leaves. The thing has berries on it!

Mulberries have a long, long season. Most fruit come ripe all at once and is gone. I would adore for apricots to be available for months on end! But no—it’s the mulberry that grows all summer long. In California, mulberry trees don’t even have to be pollinated. Thousands of berries rain down from that one tree leaving a gummy, eggplant-colored residue on the sidewalk and in a huge arc that covers to the middle of the street. The weekly street sweeper can’t begin to keep up with the mess. It will go over the spot two or three times as it swooshes down our neighborhood each Thursday. It’s a David/Goliath type deal: the mighty machine is defeated by a tiny berry.

The birds are crazy for that tree. More accurately, the birds are crazy because of that tree. Fruit can ripen to the point of fermenting on the tree or after it falls to the ground. There’s nothing like drunken birds. A bunch of larks is called an “exhaltation.” Larks are classy enough that they don’t imbibe. Crows, on the other hand, do. Liberally.

A bunch of crows is called a murder. I used to think it was because they can be so mean. Then I watched them gorge on fermented mulberries. “Murder” has to refer to the way those birds manage to nearly kill themselves or each other with their drunken antics. Since crows live in communal roosts during the summer, it is common for ove one hundred to fly together... or party. They stagger around. Their flight pattern becomes tipsy, resulting in mid-air collisions. Accustomed to sitting on telephone lines, they get to the wire, flip upside down and lose their grip. Sotted birds do very bizarre things.

We have magenta polka dots all over the neighborhood. Cars, sidewalks, garage doors, fences… everything is stained. It looks like someone broke loose with a paintball gun. Delicately phrased, birds process the berries—merely ripe, or fermented--and dive bomb a large area. Maybe we could change the phrase to a “revenge of crows.”

Vincent van Gogh painted one of his more famous pieces while staying in an asylum so he could recover from mental illness. While dipsy crows are funny, depression isn’t. I have to give van Gogh respect for recognizing he needed help and seeking it. I also think he deserves credit for his brilliance. He painted The Mulberry Tree when the leaves were changing, not in summer. He avoided the berries and birds. And silkworms, too.

Ecclesiastes says “To everything there is a season, and a purpose under heaven.”
I don’t exactly understand how mulberry trees fit in. After all, they never did help the silkworms. I guess that's another thing I'll have to ask God when I get to heaven.

I'm going to have a very long list of questions.

Cathy