The Poison Blackberries

On a Saturday during the early summer blackberry season; Dad, Mom and four of us kids went blackberry picking. It was an unusually good year. We ended up with about five gallon before noon. Upon returning to the house we all had baths to get rid of the chiggers. We got chiggers anyway.

Dad put put the berries in the creamery; a little shed attached to the back of the house where they could be washed and made ready for pies and jelly. The shed had really been a creamery years before when the farm had dairy cattle.

In the meantime, Dad received a phone call to get a client out of jail and had to leave on business. While he was gone one of my sisters stuck herself in the top of the foot with a frog gig.
Upon Dad's return, It was off to the hospital for a tetanus shot for her. In all of this confusion the blackberries had been forgotten, that is until Tuesday afternoon.

Upon realizing he had forgotten about the berries, Dad was very upset and yelling. Mom was upset and crying and us kids were just staying out of the way. Dad finally calmed down and realized the berries were ruined. They had begun to rot and mold; and they smelled real bad.

The buckets of berries were scattered on the far side of the garden near the barn yard. The family went about the business of living and doing our farm chores until late Wednesday afternoon. That is when it was discovered our seven geese had eaten the rotten blackberries and had died.

Dad was really mad now. The dead geese had been in the hot sun all day and we could not even butcher them. Mom, in her effort to salvage something from the situation began to pick the down feathers for pillow stuffing. I pulled some of the wing feathers to make me an Indian headband. After the geese had been plucked, we threw them in a farm wagon and hauled them to our trash dump on the backside of the farm. Dad was still very upset with himself.

On Thursday morning, at daybreak, we were all startled awake by a very loud commotion on the side porch. The dogs were barking and the peacocks yelling in addition to all of the noise on the porch.

When we opened the door, there stood seven of the maddest, half-drunk, naked geese ever encountered.