Your correspondent picks blueberries, and has another close encounter with Odocoileus virginianus.

That's me, on Kent Locke's farm in Barnstead, New Hampshire, carefully selecting the plumpest, ripest berries from a burgeoning bush. (What's this thing I have with alliterations involving the letter "B"?) Anyway, my wife, her cousin Lori and I picked like mad for about ten minutes, which was more than enough to bucket enough berries for a bodacious pie (There I go again!) and have plenty left over to supplement morning cereal. The bill? A mere two bucks a pint (normal fare was three, but, being 62, I qualified for Locke's senior discount). Below, behold the bounty borne by a single branch of a bush (Yikes! Am I possessed by some hoary Anglo-Saxon spirit, or perhaps that of Gerard Manley Hopkins?):

The beauty of the berries did not prove deceptive. They were the perfect combination of sweet, tart, and that ineffable musky taste that good blueberries have.

In an earlier post (one to which I've already linked in this one; forgive me if I've taken you there twice), I included a photo of a six-point buck that casually sauntered across my path in the village of Shoreham, on Long Island, a couple of weeks ago, then paused long enough for me to shoot his photo. On the road back from Locke's, this white-tailed doe, by crossing a busy highway, proved that the female of the species can engage in more dangerous escapades than the male: