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  1. For many years, there was a hedge of high-yielding blackberry bushes that hung over the brick wall at the west side of the cemetery. Karen and I lingered there, carefully tickling the thorny boughs for the sweetest berries, which would fall into our hands. This was delicate work, because the bushes were well-protected by needles that thousands of years of selection had sharpened and elongated to keep ripe fruit away from foraging birds. Its no wonder these bushes provided weeks of bounty to those who knew how to find the prize.
    One warm day, after walking the length of the wall and eating handfuls of warm, wet fruit, we noticed that we had lost Mike. My first instincts were to look ahead for his playmates. Maybe Dennis or Dave were out there with treats. But the cemetery was quiet, and Mike was not ahead of us. We began to call him.
    It was then that I turned around and looked along the brick wall where we had been picking berries. Mike was standing on his back legs, front paws on the top of the wall, and with big teeth he was raking the blackberry boughs that hung down. He pulled leaves, berries, bark, and I presume, thorns off the branches, leaving them bare. Quite a few bushes had been stripped in this way by the time we noticed. He came came off the wall and ran to us, very pleased to have participated in our berry picking.
    Every day for weeks, we passed the blackberry bushes with their naked boughs, raked by teeth, and we laughed. Mike liked fruit.
    It was adorable.

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