Cranberry bogs use spiders instead of pesticides

Hey, what are you doing? Let’s talk about cranberries! Surely you know that the cranberry is the official berry of my wonderful Commonwealth. Like the papaya, the tart berry is one of the few native North American fruits. The previous sentence is a lie because cranberries are not drupes, and I know this because I just learned what a drupe is. Cranberries are in fact epigyne or false berries, something else I just learned about and which we won’t talk about anymore since this post is about creating nightmares, not destroying dreams, which are actually two different actions. (Regardless, North Carolina cannot choose an official berry and has both an official state red berry and an official state blue berry. (You’ll never guess NC’s official blue berry.))

Massachusetts has 30% of the world’s cranberry acreage, which is a lot and also a very beautiful and real fact. Most cranberry products come from Oceanspray, a 700-member agricultural cooperative. This is a nice and less capitalistic model than most corporate juice production companies, which may make Oceanspray products taste a little sweeter. You remember this TikTok that increased sales for both Oceanspray products and Fleetwood Mac.

Cranberries are grown in bogs, but since bogs generally cannot support the weight of a large person, farmers harvest cranberries by flooding the bog and cramming the cranberries together, like so many tart reddish sheep. In this comparison, cranberry sauce is the wool of these sour sheep. And this is where the nightmares start, so consider not continuing if you’re meek.

All of this was an unnecessary introduction to get to what I really want to tell you about: According to this lost Tumblr post, if you’re trying to get a job in a cranberry bog, you might be asked what you think about spiders, and that’s strange When you ask an interview question, you might think about not telling the truth because you want to get up early and be one with the (wrong) berry. What you want to do is return to your swampy roots. What you want to do is grow cranberries like a cranberry farmer. But if you have a problem with spiders and don’t say anything, it’s going to be a different problem, and buddy, it’s going to be a big one. You see, cranberry farms have transitioned to more organic farming methods that eliminate the use of pesticides. Therefore, to keep the insect population low, farmers encourage wolf spiders to live in the moors. I’m sorry, I meant WOLF SPIDERS. And when they flood the moors to harvest the cranberries, the wolf spiders, probably called wolf spiders because they look like little eight-legged wolves, don’t ask me, I’m not a spider biologist, flee to higher ground before the deluge. Because even though they can swim like Michael Phelps, they don’t want to. So they look for a higher level and guess what the higher level is, Joann, it’s you. You are the higher level.

And that’s why the cranberry farmers will ask you what you think about spiders before they hire you, because there may be dozens of swimming wolf spiders climbing out of the water over your waders and into your hair, but you have to be okay with it because they are WOLF SPIDERS Your colleagues at Cranberry Moor and everyone, including WOLF SPIDERS, deserve a safe work environment. Wear a turtleneck or something. Maybe you think it’s okay, WOLF SPIDERS don’t bite, and when they do they are not poisonous, but they do bite, and they are poisonous, but maybe everything will work out if you let them use you for higher purposes.