100% All Natural Chewing Gum

Number of Ticks Removed: 17
Days Tick Free: 2

This morning the monkeys were howling at the top of their lungs over four fruiting Níspero trees. I’m not sure how many groups were vying for the fruit, but it seemed like there were about a ka-jillion monkeys up there. They were eating and eating this stuff, and their faces were all covered in food. I’d tasted the fruit when I was out there the other day and it was actually really good. In fact, people around here eat it all the time. So today I saw some fruits fall out of the tree, and I picked them up and began snacking. The fruit is sweet but very stringy and chewy. As I was snacking and looking up at the monkeys, I realized that I had been chewing a really long time. I spit out the wad of fruit and there on the forest floor was not fruit pulp but chewing gum. Yes, chewing gum. Níspero is in the genus Manilkara; I’m not sure if its Manilkara chicle or Manilkara zapota but either way, its the stuff that chewing gum is made of (ie, chicle=chiclets). Well, I suppose they actually chemically manufacture chewing gum now-a-days, but at one point, it was made from this stuff. I knew all this as I was eating the fruit, I just didn’t think it was as simple as chewing that sweet, stringy fruit until it just magically turned into gum. Somehow, I thought it would be more of a process.

At any rate, after sampling some of the fruit myself, I have a better understanding of why the monkeys get food faces when they’re eating it. The juice of the fruit is extremely sticky, and when it dries it feels like, well, chewing gum. Like if you are chewing gum and you blow a bubble and it pops and gets on your face. So as the monkeys eat this fruit, they get the juices all over their furry little mouths. Then it dries and essentially, the monkeys have sticky gum all over their faces! I wonder how they ever get it off? For me it took a lot scrubbing.

I haven’t had much in the way in visual aids lately on the blog, so I’ll post a picture of the Níspero fruits (with a quarter, for scale). That's just the outside; the real fruit is on the inside but I don't have a picture of that. If there are any plant knowledgeable people reading and you know which of the Manilkara species this is, please do let me know.

Thanks for reading!