The Strawberry Thieves

A strawberry patch grew beside a vegetable garden.

Every year, the gardener watched birds eat most of the strawberries before they ripened.

He tried netting. The birds found gaps.

He tried noise deterrents. The birds adjusted.

One year, exhausted, the gardener gave up. He let the birds have what they wanted.

The birds ate freely. But they also dropped seeds—in the hedgerow, under the apple tree, along the ditch.

The next year, strawberry plants appeared in a dozen places the gardener had never planted.

The harvest, scattered across the whole garden, was larger than any single patch had ever produced.

The birds hadn't been stealing the strawberries.

They had been planting them.