Hedge Apples

Recently my mates and I decided to take a walk since the weather was so nice. Snip ran ahead of everyone as usual. All of a sudden, something flew through the air toward us. We heard it hit the ground with a loud "THUMP".

Snip laughed as Peep picked up what looked like a yellow-green baseball. After looking at the yellow-green baseball, we determined it was a Hedge Apple, also known as Osage-orange. We gathered a few and took them back to my place to get a better look at them.

After arriving at my home we decided to find out what we could about the Hedge Apples. We found out that they are not edible. Only horses and other livestock will eat the fruit sometimes. Squirrels tear them apart to eat the seeds.

Sometimes the fruit is used to deter spiders, cockroaches, fleas, and other arthropods. An article posted by the Burke Museum in Washington State claims that this usage, in the case of spiders, has no evidence to support it. Snip has decided to perform his own experiment to see if this is true. This should be very interesting.

Last Camp

After very little deliberation, my mates and I decided to go camping one last time this year. We called Pete to see if he wanted to join us. Pete said he would be happy to join us, and would meet us at the campground as soon as he could.

When we arrived at the campground, we grabbed our cameras and took a walk. Beebe is our 'official' photographer, but we all like to take pictures when we are camping. We anxiously checked the foliage to see if the colors were showing yet. We sure were not disappointed. The leaves were already in the process of changing colors and we got some really good pictures.

Pete didn't arrive until after we had all settled in, so we helped him unpack, and then took another tour of the campground.

We are all looking forward to next year and more camping experiences.