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Carol Perkins: Who Knew?

Previous Column: The Old Flame

By Carol Perkins

I bought several dozen ears of corn, cooked some, and froze the rest. Guy helped by shucking the ears and throwing away the shucks and cobs. He offered to cut off the corn when he saw the way I was doing it.

"You're going to cut your arm off," he said.

I've never known anyone to cut off an arm while cutting off corn, but if he wanted to take over, I'd gladly let him.

Soon the pan was full, but when I saw the cobs, I realized that the best part remained. Guy hadn't scraped the cob.


"Who knew to do that?" he asked.

Then he remembered seeing his mother scraping the cob when he was a boy. Obviously, this was his first time at the counter with a corn cob and a knife.

I began to scrape, and he again declared I was going to cut off a finger. This time, it was a finger.

He took over and scraped the cob to its bone. Instead of dumping the remains into the trash, he gathered up the mess, carried it to the lot adjacent to our house, and threw it away.

"For the deer or raccoons," he said.

A few days later as he was mowing, he found corncobs scattered around the yard.

"Deer or raccoons," he said as he picked them up and slung them to the lot like a discus thrower.

The culprits were neither deer nor raccoons. Guy was sitting on the deck when he learned the truth. The truth he couldn't believe even though his eyes didn't deceive him.

Coming across the yard at breakneck speed was a squirrel, carrying a cob in its mouth as if it were a log, and scampering up a tree and across a limb. The cob was intact.

"How in the world did that squirrel get that far without dropping the cob?" he commented, amazed at the sight.

"Well, if its teeth can crack a nut, I guess it can hold on to a corncob.

"Who knew," Guy said, "that squirrels ate corn on the cob?"

That night, the squirrels sat around the hole in our tree and feasted on my flower bulbs, walnuts, and corn on the cob. Who knew?


You can contact Carol at carolperkins06@gmail.com.


This story was posted on 2024-08-15 10:31:29
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