"I will never understand why they cook on TV. I can't smell it. I can't eat it. I can't taste it. At the end of the show they hold it up to the camera. 'Well, here it is! You can't have any. Thanks for watching. Goodbye!'"
-Jerry Seinfeld
By Knuckles Runyon
Staff Writer
I do not watch cooking shows. Not competition cooking shows. Not celebrity cooking shows. That’s right, not even cooking shows starring Gordon Ramsay.
It’s food. It’s fuel. It’s on your lips for a few seconds.[1] At best. Sure, I like fried cheese on baked flour sprinkled with seared animal flesh as much as the next man. Give me fries with that or give me death! Yet the lengths people go to — the time they spend — to create one, specific meal utterly escapes me. They will talk about this one, specific meal for days before they make and eat this one, specific meal. This preparation, apparently, can take hours and hours, if not days. Meanwhile, I am finished eating in about eight minutes. Where’s the clicker?
Take grilling. Grilling has to be the single most overrated activity on the planet. Grilling has amazing PR.[2] A politician would kill for whoever does the PR for grilling generally and grills specifically. No one casts a single doubt that a grilled meal is a glorious meal.
What are you doing this weekend? We’re grilling!
This weekend you’re … eating?
Used to be a grill was a rack underneath of which you put some charcoal and then set those nuggets aflame. Now people design their entire backyards around a contraption that is large enough from which to run a full-service restaurant.
One problem with grilling is that all of the juices that make food taste good are drizzled onto hot coals where they later cool and congeal and burn away. You maybe see their remnants the next time you fire up the old B-B-Q.
Secretly, I think the missus knows all this. She just gets excited about grilling because it’s the one time I can actually cook food that isn’t a health hazard.
Yet, despite the evidence just offered as to why I am seldom invited to barbecues,[3] I know the name of the cooking show that could one day be televised from my house and instantly go virus, as the kids like to say.[4]
Squirrel’s Table.
That's right. You have your sous-chief and I have my squirrel-chef.
Seriously, I don’t know how the bushy-tailed rodents in my yard do it but they bring forth all kinds of foodstuffs — often in fully cooked and whole form.
The other day I found an unblemished bread-stick seven feet up in my lilac. This was, not kidding here, on Spaghetti Night at Chez Runyon — a compliment to, not a stray side, as we did not otherwise have bread-sticks on the menu.
From the look of it, in fact, I would say someone (looking at you Bushy!) may have violated the to-go policy over there at the Olive Garden.
Tut-tut, squirrel.
More recently, I observed a young squirrel cross the road ahead of me carrying a full slice of pizza. The pepperonis were larger than his head.
Now if a simmering pan of sauce pops up on my lawn …
You know, though, I do have to admit I have a soft spot for these furry-tailed varmints and not just because they serve as instant exercise for the dog.
Yes, I'm one of those schmucks: I feed them. Well, it’s more like when I sprinkle seeds and nuts for the birds I know they are going to partake, too, and I am OK with that. (I have been known to chase "off my lawn" the one who somehow manages to find his way onto my cardinal platform feeder, plopping down like he's at an all-you-can-eat buffet.)
After all, I get a kick out of watching them play. They will chase each other around the yard and up, and around, the old ash tree. Reminds me not to take life so serious.
In fact, I have to tell ya, these dang rascals pulled a good one over on old Knuck here a couple of years ago.
I was outside with the dog on our way out for a walk one fall morning when I looked up to find some of the café lights I had strung from the maple to the house were missing. This startled me. Who could have done this? Why would someone have done this?
I figured either I got someone PO’d at me (I didn't do it!) or else some way-word youths had rolled through.
Whoever it was I didn’t like the idea of people running around my backyard in the middle of the night.
So I did what any old codger would do: I filed a police report.[5]
A week or 10 days later, before an evening walk with the dog, I noticed even more of the lights were missing. I squinted. I looked at the picture I had taken after the first theft and counted and, sure enough, my eyes (and math) weren’t deceiving me. Someone had taken more lights.
The thing is, the bulbs were nowhere to be seen. You would think the vandals out getting their jollies would have thrown the bulbs as soon as they got them in their hands. Maybe smashed them on the ground. It’s not like the bulbs are worth anything — they aren’t reusable — after being ripped off the cord.
For all the holy heck I know the material the bulbs are made of is one of those odd substances found in ordinary products, such as whatever is in utility lines or Flonase that industrious junkies boil into some business that can be snorted, inhaled, or injected to get higher than a flying squirrel.[6]
Turns out, it wasn’t those dang kids after all! A kindly neighbor (who, by the way, at the time had as many café lights as I did, with not a single bulb missing) heard of my situation[7] and later suggested the culprits may, in fact, be the squirrels.
Wut?
He sent a link to a local news program that featured home footage a woman captured. Her outdoor Christmas bulbs were nabbed by a scurry of squirrels. That’s right, lo and behold, the woman’s yuletide had been lowered, one bulb at a time, and not by any sort of nocturnal Grinch. Well, I’ll be!
The postscript here is that after the winter came and went, blooming bulbs sprung up in my backyard, and at the neighbor’s, and across the street, and, well for jiminy sake, these little squeakers might be higher functioning than I am. I mean, those wires were small; you’d have to do a high-wire act to reach them. That is, if you're entire body is a foot long. Plus, the wires were 9-10 feet off the ground. The rubber wasn’t made of nothing. It would take some work for me to rip down a single bulb and here the squirrels had collected a couple of human hands full. I shook my head. I half expected to look up my five-story-tall ash tree, where the squirrels keep a drey, and see a night light on for the little ones.
You might think as a result of this caper, which cost me time and angst and the power of sight at night, I might walk around with a feeling of hostility toward these itty-bitty beast thieves.
Not so. That’s the thing about old Knuck. My heart is like more than a few of my teeth: made of gold.
[1] If around my belly longer.
[2] Really, any meal eaten outside is thought to be amazing. I don’t understand the fascination. What are we — bears?
[3] OK, one of the reasons.
[4] No, not “Steak Again Tonight?”
[5] And I barricaded the front door at night.
[6] But then I think the bulbs were plastic. And if plastic can be turned into drugs then would any of these kids show up for high school?
[7] I may or may not have sent alerts to everyone in the neighborhood.
