By Kin Kajuu Pollinator. Columnist. Problem.

The Fig Feud

Plump, purple and fragrant…speaking of the figs, not Lady Skirrit.

Ah, dear reader. Have you ever noticed that the sweetest fruit always ripens alongside the sourest behavior?

The moon has been heavy lately — full and glowing like it’s watching, and the canopy, as always, answers with intrigue. A fig patch has caused a rift this week, and I must tell you: it is delicious.

On the east spiral of the whisper vine (you know the one — excellent mist, underrated acoustics), a glistening clutch of figs emerged earlier than expected. Plump, purple, fragrant with overripe possibility. Naturally, the moment it blushed, so did the scandal.

Lady Skirrit’s clear claim and unquestionable elegance.

Enter Lady Skirrit, the thorn-backed armadillo with a taste for exclusivity and a long-standing reputation for subtle dominance. She’d already visited the patch days earlier, leaving what any seasoned forager would recognize as a clear claim — a precise pre-nibble here, a musky rub of the shoulderplate there. Elegant. Discreet.

But not everyone honors etiquette.

The Scarf-Tail Brothers — two sugar-gliding upstarts with more drama than lineage — arrived in a swirl of squeaks and declarations. According to them, the fig patch belonged to their “ancestral glide path.” According to everyone else: they just saw the fruit, saw the moment, and decided to seize both.

What followed was less a dispute and more a full-fledged canopy squabble. Lady Skirrit flared her backplates in warning. The brothers performed a series of aerial flips that said nothing and proved less. Tension rose. Figs were bruised. A particularly ripe one burst mid-air with such force it stained a squirrel’s hammock three branches below.

Moments before the unfortunate hammock stain.

Naturally, I had to intervene.
Not to settle it, of course.
To taste it.

“Let the fig decide,” I said, plucking one mid-argument and savoring its overripe sweetness. “This one tastes of betrayal. Possibly cinnamon. Delightful.”

The feud remains unresolved. Lady Skirrit has threatened arbitration. The Scarf-Tail Brothers have released a very long, very boring chirp-statement about “heritage fruit rights.” I remain amused and well-fed.