Today was a good day.  I went to Sprouts for milk, and checked the freezer case for huckleberries.  Someone told me that they stocked wild blueberries--that's what they called them.  I had been checking for the last three or four months every time I went to Sprouts.  But no luck.

They aren't wild blueberries at all.  They are huckleberries--Sprout's just doesn't know it.  The only place I had found them before was on-line, upstate in the Northwest, and they were ninety-nine dollars a gallon.  So if Sprout's wants to call them wild blueberries and sell them for thirteen dollars a gallon, fine with me.

Well finally, today, I got the last bag they had.  I would have bought more if they had been available.  But other huckleberry affectionados like me have been watching for them as well.  If you have never eaten huckleberry pie you won't understand.  And no, blueberries are not the same.

I took them over to Jeanette's house.  She is the pie maker in our connection group at church.  Next time we all get together, she said she would make a huckleberry pie so that everyone can see what I've been talking about.  And I'll keep checking the store to see if they get more in.  I hope Sprout's doesn't figure out what they are selling for ten cents on the dollar.  I've got room for them.  I bought a freezer from the owners of this house (when they moved out) and it's empty except for a few things.

We used to go to Jay, Oklahoma and buy huckleberries.  They only grow in a few places, and are wild.  The Osage (or Choctaw) Indians would pick them and once a year have a Huckleberry Festival.    They still have the festival, but nobody picks the berries any more--at least that's what they told me.   Pat and I drove all the way across Oklahoma to Jay, to see if we could buy some.  Nope.  None.

Rattlesnakes are a problem under the bushes is what I've been told.  When I was little, I believed rattlesnakes ate the huckleberries off the bushes.  I was grown before someone laughed at me, and told me that wasn't true.  Mice and other small animals eat the berries.  And the snakes lay in wait to eat the mice.  Maybe that's why people quit picking the berries.  I don't know where the "huckle" came from.  Maybe they should have named them "Rattleberries?"