Partridge? No thanks.

There's a tree in my front yard, right next to the driveway. When I bought the place it had small objects growing on it that I thought were some sort of nut. As the summer grew on, so did the "nuts", and it soon became apparent that I had, not a nut tree, but an actual, bonafide fruit tree.



Eventually the fruit gained distinct color and shape, and, behold, I had a tree full of pears.



I've actually thought at times about how fun it would be to have a
fruit tree. In my imagination, however, it was apples. Maybe oranges.
But not pears.

As summer became late summer, and late summer became September, I started noticing a certain odor in the front of my house. For the longest time I assumed it was emanating from the giant dumpster full of molded and rotten building materials.

And then it came to me: it wasn't the dumpster, it was the stench of pears.

Rotten pears!

Now I'm not a big fruit person; I'll eat apples and grapes, an occasional orange, and I enjoy the flavor but not the texture of most others. But pear is right up there with the most disgusting flavors in the world. Possibly behind pickles, but not by much. When I see a green Jelly Belly with dark green spots, I cringe.

And now I have one of the most fruitful fruit trees I've ever seen. There are pears littering my lawn and driveway; I can clean them up one day and the next another dozen have fallen to the ground. One of two things happen to a pear once it falls in my yard:
1. It gets run over by my car.
2. It rots and gets eaten by ants.

Or, in some cases, both:


It can't freeze fast enough around here.