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Joined: Jan 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
I am reading the latest New Yorker, given me by neighbor. p.88 Lying under the Apple Tree,
by Alice Munro. "Cowcatchers and pincherries in the fencerows breaking into bloom before
there was a leaf on them."
I know about cowcatchers on steam locomotives. But I can find no mention of a tree or
bush so named. Not clear what region is involved.Who knows what the are?
Further on in the story, places are named that are in Great Lakes region.
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Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,891
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,891 |
Bill,
I can't find anything viable. There is one Monthy Pyton sketch that talks of cowcathchers creeping up a wall but no picture on the site.
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Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 2,636
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 2,636 |
Dear Dr. Bill, I think pincherries are also known as choke cherries. This is a variety of wild cherry. I remember that as a child growing up in Northern Michigan, we had one in our front yard. The cool thing for us kids was collecting the semi-hard still pliable sap balls that would form (don't know why they formed, I was just a kid). Sometimes an ant or a fly would get caught in the sap ball.
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
Dear consuelo: The story was about a small town in your general vicinity. The time was early in WWII.
The fencerows meant the margins of the fields that could not be mowed by tractor cutter bar. Presumably
any trees would be removed;, leaving only saplings and brush. We had choke cherries. Even though you are unlikely to be interested in beef cattle, you might be interested in experience we had ;with choke cherries
around edge of our pasture.
My wife who raised Herefords noticed that a cow would not come out of the barn. And her urined was peculiar in that it looked extra yellow, and was foamy. She called the vet, who walked around pasture, and found places where cow had been eating chokecherry saplings, some with wilted leaves. Such leaves can contain a toxin that can injure liver, causing jaundice, which causes photosensitivity, so that the cow would actually get painful reaction of her nose and places where hair was short if she went out into sunlight.
But I still have no idea why similar saplings might be called cowcatchers.
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Joined: Feb 2002
Posts: 833
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Feb 2002
Posts: 833 |
Hey Dr Bill - I looked up "cowcatcher" in my Canajun Oxford, eh, since Alice Munro is a Canajun writer, eh, but it only gives the definition with which you are familiar...eh.
So I'm wondering if she really meant there were old discarded cowcatchers in the hedgerows?!
Let us go in peace to love and serve the board.
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