The Fruit Hunters by Adam Leith Gollner

Author:Adam Leith Gollner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2008-05-17T04:00:00+00:00

IN THE FOURTH century B.C., Ch’u Yuan wrote about why he loved fruits in a poem called “Li Sao,” translated as “Getting into Trouble.” As the popular saying goes, “a stolen apple always tastes better.” The British have actual words for pinching fruits. “Scrumping,” according to an online slang dictionary, means stealing apples from someone else’s trees. The art of apple theft is “oggy raiding.”

In certain circumstances, scrumping is entirely legal. The term usufruct refers to the right to use and enjoy something that belongs to another person when it extends beyond their property. The word comes from the Latin usus, to use, and fructus, fruit. It applies to fruit dangling from a tree into the street, or an alleyway or into another person’s lawn. It’s courteous to ask before plucking, but in case of a disagreement, usufruct provides a legal justification for eating them.

Thoreau was a firm advocate of scrumpers’ rights. “What sort of country is that where the huckleberry fields are private property?” he howled. If only St. Augustine had known about usufruct, perhaps he’d have been less hard on himself—and the rest of Western Civilization. Book Two of his Confessions describes the night he and a band of fellow ruffians stole pears off a neighbor’s trees. It was a thrilling sin—which later filled him with tremendous guilt. “Perhaps we ate some of them, but our real pleasure consisted in doing something that was forbidden.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions tells how he was beaten for stealing apples as a thirteen-year-old, an incident that marked him for life: “The horror of that moment returns—the pen drops from my hand.” Lucky for him he didn’t grow up in ancient Greece, where a law passed in A.D. 620 meted out the death penalty to fruit thieves and fruit tree molesters.

John McPhee, reporting on orange thefts in Florida, learned of burglars jumping out of anchored boats with burlap bags, picking fruits under the cover of night, and making getaways with thousands of stolen oranges in luxury sedans. One thief boasted that he could pick enough oranges by moonlight to fill a Cadillac in three hours.

A 2006 banana shortage in Australia caused by orchard-flattening cyclones led to a rash of fruit thefts. The Times of London reported that rustlers were breaking into unguarded plantations at nighttime and cutting off bunches of fruits. Bananas more than quadrupled in value. Fruit stores were also being targeted: one grocer put out a sign saying, “No bananas are kept on these premises overnight.”

Safeguarding fruits has become increasingly vital. In Florida, sapote farmers guard their trees with rifles. Others pile fresh soil around their trees to track footprints. Bands of crop-heisting guerrillas roam rural Madagascar, leading farmers to stock firearms for self-defense. Corsica’s kiwi Mafia are notorious for attempted murders of farmers unwilling to pay protection money. Avocado commandos have told Californian farm workers, “We’re coming to steal these avocados, and if you don’t like it we’ll kill you.” Three Flags Ranch, the biggest mango farm in California, occupies a sprawling 192 acres near the Salton Sea.

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