Animal review for August 12, 2005 

Orchard of Broken Dreams 

Max Goldt once wrote a nice book, Quitten für die Menschen zwischen Emden und Zittau. The title means „[fruit everyone has heard of because it’s often in jelly, but which almost no one can identify on the hoof] for the people who live between [two places no one has heard of, both presumably in the former East Germany].“ After five or so years here, I met one of the race of amiable, forthright nerds (they were hunted almost to extinction during Germany’s „Troubles,“ but the population is slowly recovering) who give you straight and accurate answers when you ask questions like, „What on earth are Quitten?“ And what are they? They are huge, lumpy, rock-hard pears. That is, they are the pears of Uzbekistan, but only when seen from a distance through the eyes of wistful longing. Up close they are something you can boil for jelly. 

Triffids 

I was disturbed by the presence of evil (nine feet tall, avidly branching and flowering, spiny, metallic) thistles. There were only two of them and they were a good mile from our house, but I share the reader’s deeply felt concern for the welfare of future generations, so I felled them one evening with a serrated knife. Their thick, tense, hollow stems snapped like cables. It was nearly a month before I returned to the scene of the crime. They were still something along the lines of dead. Neighboring thistles had resolved to escape my attentions by not growing any taller, so when they take over, at least they’ll be short.