A minor mystery solved, of who had been neatly scything--as with a bluntish but well-wielded knife, sections of some of the numerous windfall apples around the place. Raccoons are theoretically around but rarely seen & would have found much else to their liking & made a big mess, bears wouldn't leave a half apple under any imaginable scenario & who knows where they are this year, ravens perhaps but just can't see them bothering with fruit what with all the carrion around, but just now I saw a steller's jay fly by with a good third of a big red apple in its beak with a bit of cut edge showing: they must use their beaks, apples must be splittable with a good pivot and a couple of sawstrokes. And yesterday I saw a young swain walking home from school hand in hand with his girlfriend in the rain run into a yard to fetch a big yellow apple off a tree, which he dried and polished on his hoodie and presented with courtly panache. Like Daph (who deigned to construct a pie last week) & Bob (who ran onto the coaltip farm & fetched one for me some weeks back), but unlike me, the jay had that mental map of good trees, secure caches, secret routes, recipes.