But on opening the little box and looking a little closer, I saw the damage. Oh. And thought, it’s a toss-up whether that was the mockingbird that found one of the airholes in the plastic and went at it or a jay. The hole in the fruit isn’t too deep, but that beak had to get past the airspace between the tops of the apple and of the shell.
A crow couldn’t have fit in there. A mockingbird’s beak is too short. Scrub jay it is, then. Busted.
I cut up an unpecked apple and tried it with a sense of reverence that at long last, our first apple. Twenty-six years in this house and we finally get to find out what the rootstock-gr0wn-back one was all about. Drum roll!
And the verdict was: yeah, yeah, I know it’s underripe but that’s a really mealy lousy apple for eating. Isn’t the mealyness supposed to happen when they’re overripe?
But I put it in the microwave with a bit of water, zapped it about 75 seconds (it wasn’t very big), scraped the flesh out of the peel–and had me some really fine applesauce. Seriously good applesauce, given the nothingness I was expecting. A bit of zing to it, good texture, just right.
The mystery tree stays.