Like a Box of Bitten Chocolates

You know how annoying it is when someone bites a chocolate from a boxed assortment and doesn't like it and puts it back in the box?

I don't actually know anyone who does that, but it SOUNDS really annoying.

Well, think that kind of annoying, and that's what I discovered when I went to pick the sour cherries from our tree earlier today.

I knew the catbirds and blue jays have been raiding the tree, but the cherries weren't really ripe enough to pick (for us humans), so I figured they could have a few and I'd get the bulk of them in a week or so.

Ha.

Today I decided that the majority of the cherries were ripe enough, and it was time to take back the tree from all the feathered thieves.

Except that those feathered thieves didn't just take a cherry and eat it.  No, they obviously poked their sharp little beaks into a bunch of cherries, sampling as they went along, leaving their leftovers on the tree for me to find.

So about half the fruit that looked ripe had already been partially eaten and was starting to rot where the skin was broken, and it was therefore no good to me.

I harvested all the berries I could reach that weren't ruined, and, after pitting them, I got about two cups.  Two lousy cups.

But it was enough, coupled with the big bag of cherries I happened to get at the grocery store, to go into a cherry cobbler for dessert tonight.  I've got vanilla ice cream to go with it.

Let's see the birds top that.