urbpan | Pumpkin termites, and other mundane details pertaining to food.

This was the dirt-facing surface of a pumpkin that grew from one of our triffid-like garden dominating pumpkin vines. I could see that it was already compromised by some other pumpkin grazer on the top side, and was starting to rot. I was quite surprised to see termites (members of our one New England species, the eastern subterranean termite) burrowing in. Seems kind of lazy for an animal specially adapted to eat wood cellulose to take on pumpkin flesh, but who am I to criticize a creature for taking the easy route?

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I removed the pumpkin and split it to see what was happening inside. The termite activity was all at the surface. The rest of the colony is under our garden, no doubt. Soldiers with their disproportionate heads and huge mandibles patrolled the area of disturbance.

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The pumpkin outpost was cleared of soldiers and workers by our own domestic animals. Go Blackie! The rest of the pumpkin is on the compost pile.

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In other garden news our tomato plants have produced a whole constellation of little yellow and orange suns. These are nice sliced in half and served in a huge pile of scrambled eggs.

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In sharp contrast, the food news from outside of the house is not good. This monstrosity is an "iced coffee" from Wendy's. I plead poverty. Any size iced coffee is 99 cents there, so I went for the trans-Bloomberg size. Unfortunately, my directions to add "just a little milk" were interpreted as "nearly fill the cup with cream and top it off with a dash of coffee." I took it back to the office, made a k-cup of hot coffee and used a small amount of this quart of cream to lighten it.