Fruit Tree Safari
I was old enough to count the dots on a ladybug’s back and small enough to confuse a branch for a tree trunk. I had the pointy ears of a monkey, the sweet tooth of a hummingbird and the eyesight of a hawk. No fruit tree was safe from my grasp.
A biologist would have classified me as a true frugivore. The staple of my diet were urban fruit, nuts, insects, store bought juices and candies. During the night I slept in a brutalist apartment building and in the day I was out and about roaming the streets and grasslands of my old neighborhood Ovcha Kupel Two in Sofia, Bulgaria.
I used to call it the Big Bang of Communist Buildings. As if out of the nothingness, countless apartment buildings were risen like termite nests over a never ending horizon of grass fields. The neighborhood was a unique ecosystem of concrete, crazy people, stray dogs and fruit trees. The name Ovcha Kupel Two came from the shepherds herding their livestock in the local swampy meadows, which were a favorite place for all grazing animals.
The land was a sparse archipelago of underground springs spread across a massive savanna of wild wheat, donkey thorns and grass. In the distance, Vitosha Mountain was looming over the neighborhood and looked like a volcano that was about to erupt. Growing up there, the scenery made me feel like I was living in prehistoric times. I thought Vitosha was a home to extinct dinosaurs and that in the tall grass near the playground were lurking big wild cats ready to snatch me. Fortunately, the most dangerous beast I encountered in the grasslands was a small tick that bit my left butt cheek.
The idea that I was living in prehistoric times was mostly a fiction of my imagination but to my stomach I was truly a hunter gatherer. If we ignore the suppers with my family and the chocolate eating rampages I was very much guilty of, the rest of time I had the eating habits of a feral child. I devoured fruit right off the trees, chewed on dandelions, vine leafs and berries, while decimating whole ant colonies.
My favorite fruit was the wild plum. One could eat it in its three stages of development. In its fetal stage, just a touch bigger than a chickpea, the wild plum tastes like an iodine candy that makes the tongue tripping. It wasn’t much of a pleasant meal but in its own right, consuming the fruit was a form of spring celebration. After the wild plum juices up in size, it quickly transforms into a crunchy green sour bomb that was a renowned delicacy for most of the children in the neighborhood. Eating it often meant bellyache and crying in the bathroom. Finally, when the fruit goes ripe, it turns into juicy mush of sugary meat that would drive you insane and make you climb the highest of branches just to get another taste of it.
My palate wasn’t discriminatory, nor sophisticated. If something was sweet or sour I was there to devour it. I was especially gluttonous towards the baby vine braches that looked like little green pig tails. A handful of those with some sweet grapes and I was already overdosing on vitamin C for the day. Shriveled rose hips and dandelion hearts were also high up the menu. But when it came to guilty pleasures I must admit that ants tasted good as well. They were like little walking lemonade stands. I wasn’t after the crunch of their exoskeleton but after the acidic kick of their bellies. Eating an ant was like munching on the world’s most sour and fibrous berry. It was awesome.
Looking back at this, bombarding my milk teeth with acidic food wasn’t a sign of bad oral manners but a token of one’s desire to ingest and celebrate the outside world. To roam aimlessly and explore what’s behind the street corner, under the rock or inside the field ahead, is most probably what freedom tastes like. I am especially lucky to be reminded of that feeling just by peeking from my window and seeing the nearest fruit tree.
When I see a wild apple I immediately go back to the memory of me hanging from an apple tree, snacking on its fruit, while spectating how my friends played ping pong long after our curfew. I remember the big spotlight that my brother used for lighting the metal table and the swarm of nocturnal insects that drove us crazy. The child laughter that was more prominent than cricket chirping, and the safety of the thick branches.
When I lived like a little beast I tapped into other realms of awareness. There was a sense of cross-species empathy. I could tell how song birds feel when they stuff themselves with grapes, why the giant anteater goes through so much trouble, or even why the bees are so crazy about dandelion nectar. It was fun to think that way and not worry how crazy that sounds because I was free.
Sadly, when we grow up we enter into a world of rules. Suddenly we see signs that forbid us from walking on the grass and our peers look at us strange if the apple we eat was picked by ourselves. At some point we all become part of the generation that gasps at the blossom of a tree, but remains blind to its fruits.
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Yoan Bondakov is an AUBG student Majoring in Journalism and Mass Communication. He loves writing and animals.
