Things are Precious only when Rare

Bow did not even ask for his cherries this morning. He does not want them. He's had too many cherries lately, and he does not find them the least bit tempting, anymore. On the other hand, he finished his grapes.

Bow Looks at His Leftovers after Breakfast

The grapes are store bought, so I dole them out sparingly. The cherries are homegrown, so he can have them at every meal and snack time, if he likes.

Bow's Breakfast Table after Breakfast
grapes entirely consumed, cereal bowl with leftover flakes and cherries untouched

You can lead a chimp to cherries, but you cannot make him eat them. Of course, it wasn't always like this. If you have been following my other blog,  The Feast Before Us, then you know that at first, we anticipated the feast to come:

http://thefeastbeforeus.blogspot.com/2013/06/anticipating-feast-to-come.html

Then we enjoyed eating the cherries:

http://thefeastbeforeus.blogspot.com/2013/06/cherries-and-cherry-pits.html

And finally, to make the cherries more interesting, we also tried them in jello:

http://thefeastbeforeus.blogspot.com/2013/06/a-surplus-of-cherries.html

But the time has come to accept the facts: the cherries are less valued now that they are so abundantly available. It isn't a strictly human phenomenon or one that applies only to chimpanzees: to be precious, something has to be rare.

Have you noticed that food prices naturally tend to go up in a famine or fall in a period of abundance? It is not greed on the part of sellers nor cupidity in consumers. It is just a fact of nature. immutable and fixed, and it has nothing to do with money, except insofar that money reflects the most basic instincts of us all: we will appreciate it more if it is rare.

Waiting for Grandma

My mother arrived late last night, and she told me she might be sleeping in, so I should not wake her for breakfast. I could ring the bell to announce that it was time, but we should not wait for her, and we should proceed without her if she did not come to the pens, because if she doesn't respond it must be because she is asleep.

I have a little hand bell that I ring to let people in the rest of the house know that a meal is ready in the pens. This morning when I rang the bell and my mother did not come, I told Bow that we would just proceed without her, because she needed to sleep.

But Bow was not happy. He didn't sit in his eating spot. He did not take my hand to spell out what food he wanted to eat. He just kept sitting by the door and waiting for grandma for the longest time. To him, it did not seem right to start without her.

When eventually he did agree to eat, he looked a little sad.

But later grandma did join us, long after we had finished our meal, and she had a special present just for Bow. It was some bite sized sausages. "Look Bow, I brought you a gift."

Bow took my hand to spell what he wanted to eat now that grandma was up. But he didn't call them sausages. He just said he wanted  the  "gift." .(מתנה)

When Bow is Full

Because Teyman cannot be left alone with the new puppy, Leo, we have taken to allowing Brownie and Leo free run of the backyard, while Teyman who is older, stays longer indoors and gets walked on a leash in our front yard. Sword and I take turns walking Teyman, and Bow seems to accept that I get to take an early morning walk with Teyman before I serve breakfast to him in the pens.

This morning, while on my walk with Teyman, I stopped to pick some blackberries by the fence to the pasture, and I served them to Bow along with his usual bunch of grapes. Bow asked for the grapes first, but I got distracted, and started to give him the blackberries, instead. He stared at me and did not budge, making no move to take the blackberries from me. "Oh. Right. You said grapes." So I went back and got the grapes. He finished the grapes, asked for the blackberries, finished the blackberries, and then asked for "just milk."

Normally, at this point he would have asked for cereal. There was a bowl and spoon on his table, all in readiness for that. But since he asked for just milk, I took the spoon away and poured milk into the bowl. He drank a little, then handed me the bowl that was still full of milk. "Thank you," he spelled. "Give me a blanket."

The "thank you" was surprising. He does say it sometimes, but it's only on rare occasions. I'm not one of those parents who insist on "thank you" and "please" all the time. So when he does say "thank you", he must really mean it.

He then asked for a blanket and started playing with it. It's only  a small remnant of blanket that is left of the one he got for Christmas, but he's happy with it.

It's nice that he knows when he is full, and it's a good development that he no longer makes a mess with excess food. If he doesn't want to finish, he just gives the remainder back.