Dam Busters

Greetings, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea!

This weekend is the time for all of us good Pilgrims and Pilgrim-ettes to give thanks for a veritable cornucopia of blessings that we enjoy in this great country, from the fruited plains to the purple mountain's majesty, from the redwood forests to the New York islands, from the ramparts we hailed to the oceans white with foam. Not to mention, the land of the free and the home of the brave, but that's another ballgame altogether. Thanksgiving is one event that has very little controversy associated with is, and there seems to be no wrong way to celebrate the occasion, as people travel, shop, chow down and gorge themselves on an endless media barrage of football, parades and holiday-themed movies and television shows. What's not to love? For everyone who is going over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house, or finds themselves staying in place and tending the home fires for company instead, here's a little bit of woodland humor for you. Happy Thanksgiving and gobble, gobble!

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DAM IT ALL

This is an actual letter sent to a man named Ryan DeVries by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Quality, State of Pennsylvania.

SUBJECT: DEQ File No.97-59-0023; T11N; R10W, Sec. 20; Lycoming County

Dear Mr. DeVries:

It has come to the attention of the Department of Environmental Quality that there has been recent unauthorized activity on the above referenced parcel of property. You have been certified as the legal landowner and/or contractor who did the following unauthorized activity:

Construction and maintenance of two wood debris dams across the outlet stream of Spring Pond.

A permit must be issued prior to the start of this type of activity.

A review of the Department’s files shows that no permits have been issued.

Therefore, the Department has determined that this activity is in violation of Part 301, Inland Lakes and Streams, of the Natural Resource and Environmental Protection Act, Act 451 of the Public Acts of 1994, being sections 324.30101 to 324.30113 of the Pennsylvania Compiled Laws, annotated.

The Department has been informed that one or both of the dams partially failed during a recent rain event, causing debris and flooding at downstream locations. We find that dams of this nature are inherently hazardous and cannot be permitted. The Department therefore orders you to cease and desist all activities at this location, and to restore the stream to a free-flow condition by removing all wood and brush forming the dams from the stream channel. All restoration work shall be completed no later than January 31, 2006.

Please notify this office when the restoration has been comopleted so that a follow-up site inspection may be scheduled by our staff.

Failure to comply with this request or any further unauthorized activity on the site may result in this case being referred for elevated enforcement action.

We anticipate and would appreciate your full cooperation in this matter.

Please feel free to contact me at this office if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

David L. PriceDistrict Representative and Water Management Division~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~

Re: DEQ File No 97-59-0023; T11N; R10W, Sec. 20; Lycoming County

Dear Mr. Price:

Your certified letter dated 12/17/05 has been handed to me to respond to. I am the legal landowner but not the Contractor at 2088 Dagget Lane, Trout Run, Pennsylvania.

A couple of beavers are in the (State unauthorized) process of constructing and maintaining two wood “debris” dams across the outlet stream of my Spring Pond. While I did not pay for, authorize, nor supervise their dam project, I think they would be highly offended that you call their skillful use of nature’s building materials “debris.” I would like to challenge your department to attempt to emulate their dam project any time and/or any place you choose. I believe I can safely state there is no way you could ever match their dam skills, their dam resourcefulness, their dam ingenuity, their dam persistence, their dam determination and/or their dam work ethic.

As to your request, I do not think the beavers are aware that they must first fill out a dam permit prior to the start of this type of dam activity.

My first dam question to you is:

(1) Are you trying to discriminate against my Spring Pond Beavers, or(2) do you require all beavers throughout this State to conform to said dam request?

If you are not discriminating against these particular beavers, through the Freedom of Information Act, I request completed copies of all those other applicable beaver dam permits that have been issued. Perhaps we will see if there really is a dam violation of Part 301, Inland Lakes and Streams, of the Natural Resource and Environmental Protection Act, Act 451 of the Public Acts of 1994, being sections 324.30101 to 324.30113 of the Pennsylvania Compiled Laws, annotated.

I have several concerns. My first concern is; aren’t the beavers entitled to legal representation? The Spring Pond Beavers are financially destitute and are unable to pay for said representation - so the State will have to provide them with a dam lawyer. The Department’s dam concern that either one or both of the dams failed during a recent rain event, causing flooding, is proof that this is a natural occurrence, which the Department is required to protect. In other words, we should leave the Spring Pond Beavers alone rather than harassing them and calling their dam names.

If you want the stream “restored” to a dam free-flow condition, please contact the beavers - but if you are going to arrest them, they obviously did not pay any attention to your dam letter, they being unable to read English.

In my humble opinion, the Spring Pond Beavers have a right to build their unauthorized dams as long as the sky is blue, the grass is green and water flows downstream. They have more dam rights than I do to live and enjoy Spring Pond. If the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection lives up to its name, it should protect the natural resources (Beavers) and the environment (Beaver’s Dams.)

So, as far as the beavers and I are concerned, this dam case can be referred for more elevated enforcement action right now. Why wait until 1/31/2006? The Spring Pond Beavers may be under the dam ice then and there will be no way for you or your dam staff to contact/harass them then.

In conclusion, I would like to bring to your attention a real environmental quality (health) problem in the area. It is the bears! Bears are actually defecating in our woods. I definitely believe you should be persecuting the defecating bears and leave the beavers alone.

If you are going to investigate the beaver dam, watch your step! (The bears are not careful where they dump!)

Being unable to comply with your dam request, and being unable to contact you on your dam answering machine, I am sending this response to your dam office.

THANK YOU.

Ryan DeVries & The Dam Beavers

Queen Of All She Surveys

Fielder's Choice

Hello World,

Howdy, Pilgrim! Although around here, the weather does not seem to be cooperating, all other indications point to that time of year when families everywhere can look forward to a visit from Mr. Tom Turkey and all the trimmings. For weeks, the newspapers and magazines have been stuffed (you should pardon the expression) with recipes for those traditional holiday favorites, such as turkey kabobs, cranberry salsa and sweet potato chowder. Now, just hold on a minute there! I tell you, these are challenging times for us hide-bound traditionalists out here. Next thing you know, we'll be having mashed potato pizza with fried stuffing fingers, and then where will we be? Turkey kabobs, indeed.

Earlier in the month, we were joined by our friends from up north, who wanted to take a second swing at the seasonal offerings at Fortunoff's, since the previous time they visited, it was too early for that, as impossible as it might sound, but there you have it. When they first opened the new Fortunoff's in White Plains several years ago, their Trim-A-Tree department was something to behold, spreading out in every direction with a veritable cornucopia of unusual and distinctive holiday decorations. Our favorite part was the abundance of spectacular and intricately designed dioramas in display cases, which included a model train running through a landscape of Victorian England, vintage New York City, New England seashore, country villages or amusement parks by turns, and featuring wonderfully animated shops, houses, rides, theaters, skating ponds, churches, farms, town squares, toy stores and many other seasonal attractions. It was worth a trip, and we were glad that we caught its inaugural season. In the years since, we have found the department has not been decked out quite so elaborately, and this year there were practically no dioramas to speak of, which we sorely missed. Some of us (who shall remain nameless, but who look a lot like me) managed to console ourselves by spending outrageous amounts of money on things that we certainly didn't need any more of, and anyone who collects things will know exactly what I mean.

After that, it was off to our new favorite hotel, the Renaissance, where we all stayed recently and had a wonderful time. This was no different, and we were pleased with our accommodations, and the breakfast buffet, which is out of this world. Early in the morning, we hurried downstairs for a dip in the pool, as well as the Jacuzzi, and even availed ourselves of the hiking trail that winds through the bucolic woods behind the hotel. After we checked out, we decided to go some place we had never been before, since it is new to White Plains and is called the City Center right in the heart of downtown. It has wide-ranging offerings from all the major retail groups, including food chains, banks, clothing stores, discount stores, book stores, movies and more. Unlike most malls which tend to sprawl outward, this has a more vertical design, so that the movies and food court are on the third floor, while Target is two floors below ground level. It's done in a very interesting way, and because it's so new, everything is clean and fresh, with wonderful murals and artwork throughout. Later in the day, when we were in the mood for a snack, we discovered Cold Stone, which is a locally famous ice cream parlor, where they take their own homemade basic ice cream and blend in the flavors you choose, on a cold stone slab right in front of you. It's highly entertaining, and you can believe me when I say that the banana almond caramel is worth the trip all by itself. In fact, I'm pretty sure that our friends left at some point around then, but I was still eating my ice cream, so I didn't really notice.

Alert readers may be wondering what is new and exciting in the wonderful world of sports these days. Well may you ask! Anyone who had been watching the New York Mets playing at home at all earlier in the year, would have had no trouble seeing that the parking lot just beyond the bullpen at Shea Stadium was being systematically chopped up by a motley assortment of heavy equipment and a bevy of construction workers in hard hats. This went on for months and months in plain view of everyone, and in fact, the announcers routinely mentioned this disruption in the parking situation when encouraging people to use mass transit instead of driving to attend home games. Frankly, if this was supposed to be a secret, it was about the worst kept secret since the Earth was flat. (It's not.) So you can imagine our surprise when we saw a story in the sports section of our local paper announcing the groundbreaking ceremony for the new $600 million ballpark, featuring the Mets ownership, politicians and financiers. I certainly hope that no one fell in that gaping hole in the ground that has been there for the past 6 months ahead of this so-called groundbreaking ceremony, and I don't mind saying a misnomer if ever there was one, because that would really be hard to explain to anyone. They also let slip the interesting tidbit that the new ballpark, which is set to open for play in 2009 and is supposed to look like the old Ebbets Field, will be calling itself Citi Field, as a result of Citigroup Inc. paying the Mets $20M each year for 20 years in exchange for the naming rights. I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky that the Viagra people couldn't come up with twenty million dollars for twenty years, or even worse, Port-A-Potty. "Say fans, get behind your team and watch the Mets kick some butt at the Port-A-Potty Bowl in Flushing!" The mind reels.

People who are not geography challenged may not relate to this, but I had a humbling experience earlier in the week when a cyber-friend sent me a link to something called GeoQuiz (and by all means, please feel free to visit their web site at www.lizardpoint.com/fun/geoquiz and see for yourself) where you can test your knowledge of the modern world. Or, if you're a moron like me, what you end up doing instead of testing your knowledge is confirming your ignorance, which if I wasn't already taking a variety of mood-enhancing drugs, I would tend to find pretty depressing, thank you very much not. I started in Europe, where I figured I would have about the best chance, since I know practically nothing about Africa, and I knew if they asked me one question about Australia, I already wouldn't know the answer. So they show you all the European countries nestled together cheek by jowl, as they are, and in different colors (which they aren't in real life, by the way) and then they tell you to go ahead and click on the one that you think is Slovenia. So you click on something to the right of Italy, and it tells you, no that's Slovakia, try again. So you click on something different even farther to the right, and that turns out to be Ukraine. So then it feels sorry for you, and asks you to try to find The Netherlands instead, which only goes to prove that you can find Norway, Sweden and Finland, but somehow The Netherlands continue to elude you, that is, if you're an idiot like me. Then it really must have taken pity on me, and lobbed me a few fat ones, so that I could at least demonstrate that I knew where to find France, Spain, Portugal, England, Ireland, Greenland and Poland. After that, it asked me to locate Moldova, and at that point, I just had to throw in the towel and splutter, "Okay, now you're just making this stuff up!" Moldova, indeed.

Meanwhile at work, there must have been some sort of a major slip-up somewhere, because it was impossible not to notice that all of a sudden this week, the toilet paper in the ladies room was way too soft. This was in stark contrast to our regular "prison-grade" material with the wood chips still in it, which I have the feeling is distributed under the trade name of Scratchex, and lives up to its name and then some. Our Housekeeping department at the hospital is out-sourced and buys its own supplies, we don't do that in Purchasing, so we have no way of knowing how this monumental blunder could have occurred. But I would expect there to be wholesale employee ousters as the management company, you should pardon the pun, gets to the bottom of this. Of course, they'd have to do it at the Port-A-Potty Bowl in Flushing, but that goes without saying.

Puff Daddy

Hello World,

Greetings again! For all of you "oldsters" among us (and don't think I don't know who you are!) we find ourselves poised on the very brink of Veteran's Day, formerly known as Armistice Day, and also formerly celebrated on November 11th, back in the day when all of us cave people and dinosaurs really used to understand how to observe real holidays. Alas and alack for those good old days, when prehistoric reptiles roamed the vast unformed land masses, and the primordial ooze used to squish up between our toes. Those were the days, indeed. In any event, nowadays no one knows what an armistice is, and poor Veteran's Day has been unceremoniously relegated to the "also-ran" category of non-occasions, along the lines of Arbor Day and United Nations Day, except without all of the parking tickets. (Oh, hit that easy target!) Anyway, that's what tomorrow would bring us, if there were any standards any more, which as we all know, there aren't. It's true there are a few concessions to the memory of the holiday, notably a disruption of the garbage schedule and a few desultory business closings on Friday or Monday, but you can tell that their hearts are not in it. Alas, poor Armistice Day! I knew him, Horatio.

Tomorrow is also Bill's birthday, and you can believe that plans are afoot to treat him to a special day in honor of the occasion. Speaking of the birthday boy, Bill would never forgive me if I neglected to relay his favorite part of the hospital's mandatory evacuation training for employees, which is that it was held in the auditorium, where the emergency exit has been blocked for years, and in a wildly flagrant way, by an enormous and outmoded hulk of decommissioned medical equipment that most likely dates back to the Year of the Flood, and has been sitting in the same place probably since the Taft administration. For the fellow presenting the evacuation information, and stressing the importance of keeping emergency exits clear, you would have to agree that this looked very bad indeed. Not to mention the graffiti on the equipment that said "Taft is daft!"

Meanwhile, this is one of my favorite headlines in recent memory, as it appeared in the sports section of our local newspaper, the Journal News. (Their motto: "We Could Tell You Our Motto, But Then We'd Have To Kill You.") For those of you not familiar with the lower Hudson Valley, one of our neighboring towns is scenic and lovely Rye, much beloved by the locals, and home to the famous Rye Playland amusement park of lore and legend. For a story about a football game between high school teams in two different towns, this is exactly how the headline appeared in print:

TOP-SEEDED
RYE ROLLS
OVER ARDSLEY

I just love that part about the top-seeded rye rolls! I thought that was so funny. While we're on the topic of curiously worded subjects, Bill loves these two survey questions that stop just short of making any sense. The first is from our friends at www.zoomerang.com about luxury cars:

Which of the following statements best describes your current status in terms of car ownership?
* Next month
* 2-3 months
* 4-6 months
* 7-12 months
* 2-3 years
* 4 years+

Well, alrighty then! We might need to send that question back to the drawing board, or perhaps the Board of Education, for a comprehension review. This next one came from the friendly folks at www.surveys.ipsos-or.com and really got our attention:

Which of the following household products have you personally used in the PAST SIX MONTHS? (Please select all that apply.)
* Wipes
* Disposable plates or cups
* Paper napkins
* Facial tissue
* Paper cups
* Paper towels
* Food
* Paper plates.

How's that again? Here I'm thinking that anyone who hasn't personally used any food in the past six months is most likely not filling out this questionnaire to start with! Could things possibly get any sillier in the realm of questions and answers?

You bet! Of course, we all remember that the hospital requires all employees to complete mandatory educational courses each year that cover a wide range of important topics, such as fire safety, emergency preparedness and infection control. Recently, the director of the department that monitors staff education sent us all a report showing completion rates for our employees who had or had not completed these courses for 2006. For the Purchasing department, they listed 3 people, and only one of me (I mean, only one of us) had completed the courses so far for this year. Naturally, according to the report, this amounted to a completion rate of 25% overall. Excuse me??? If this is the New Math that we all keep hearing so much about, I can't say that I care for it all that much.

Speaking of New Math, a few weeks ago I was compiling the month-end payroll reports for the departments in my purview, and for one of the employees who had 150 hours of sick time, I added in an additional 3 hours, and somehow came up with 180 hours. Hmmmm. Seems to be a little bit of pronoun trouble, as Daffy Duck would say, and he ought to know.

People without pets may not realize that if you have cats that are ill or old, and have lost their appetites, one thing that will almost always entice them to eat is baby food. They go wild for those little jars of ham, chicken, lamb or turkey, and although they're not a complete and balanced diet for cats (not to mention that they're too expensive by far as a regular diet) they will do the trick when everything else fails. We found ourselves having this problem sequentially with a series of our cats, so there was Bill at the supermarket buying jars of baby food week in and week out, and for a much longer period than is usually necessary. Finally, he noticed that the register coupons he was getting from the store were for discounts on the second stage of strained meals for older tots. I guess even the cash register recognized that our "babies" should have graduated to more advanced foods by now, instead of the infant foods we kept buying.

And speaking of our cats, we can't forget to mention that we have a celebrity in our family, and in a most unexpected turn of events, it's one of the invisible cats, to boot. Anyone reading the September/October issue of American Motoring, the official magazine of the American Motors Owners Association (and by all means, please feel free to visit their web site at www.amonational.com and see for yourself) would find a blurry picture of our large orange Puffin at the bottom of Page 4. I had to send them that picture because Puffin was sprawled out on top of a copy of The Classified American (where people can buy and sell used cars, auto parts, literature or memorabilia) and looked like he was engrossed in perusing its offerings for just the right American Motors merchandise for the Cat About Town. If he wasn't invisible, that is. Of course, you can get away with a lot of stuff when you're invisible, heaven knows, and no one the wiser. Say! Who spray painted "Taft is daft!" on the credenza?

Trick Or Treat

Hello World,

Happy November! I hope that you enjoyed a "spook-tacular" holiday, with fun and treats for bugs and ghouls alike. We find ourselves already on the other side of Halloween, and lived to tell the tale, so that's my idea of a successful holiday right there. You're welcome to look over my shoulder and see how the holiday played out around here, from someone right in the thick of things and a view from the trenches.

Even after all these years, I continue to be surprised by unanticipated costume complications. When I first came up with the idea of the Easter Bunny costume last year, I expected that it would be standard enough that the pieces would be easily assembled by any moron, proving once again, I suppose, that my grip on reality is tenuous at best. This had the effect of lulling me into a false sense of security, so that I didn't start my costume gathering efforts early enough. I discovered that you can easily spend $200 or more on a premium Easter Bunny or rabbit mascot costume from a variety of retailers, but I was having no part of that, and not just for the cost impact. I knew that having a full-body fleecy jumpsuit would be much too hot and unwieldy to wear all day at work, and so was not an option for me. I figured that I could wear a white shirt, white pants and fuzzy white slippers, then all I would need would be the vest, ears, bowtie and tail and I would be all set. What could be simpler?

Not so fast! Although you can scrape together a bunny kit that includes ears, tail and bowtie, there's no place that will sell you an Easter-themed vest for love or money, no matter how hard you look, and believe me, I gave it everything I had. All full Easter Bunny costumes come with a perky vest with designs of eggs, chicks, flowers, rabbits and so on. But no one sells the vests separately, or in fact, any vest with flowers, or even pastel stripes or polka dots, that would have done in a pinch. There are cowboy vests and SWAT team vests, and after that, you're out of luck. I went ahead and bought the ears, tail and bowtie, and luckily the same web site also had a plastic tablecloth with an Easter egg print, so I got that also, and ended up cutting it up to make my own sort of semi-vest-smock affair that would serve the purpose. Because I am an idiot, I didn't check my order sooner to notice that while they sent me a whole box full of things that I would need for other holidays, they left out the one thing I needed for Halloween, namely, the bunny ears, tail and bowtie. So here I was scrambling around pretty much at the eleventh hour to get the rest of my costume parts, and luckily Bill stepped in and saved the day, as he so often does, and rescued my costume from disaster.

We've been having construction crews tearing up the roads for months around the hospital, and even with the flagmen and police officers in the intersections directing traffic, you still take your life in your hands trying to cross the street. I usually walk two blocks out of my way just to duck those intersections with the construction, because I've had too many near misses for my tastes, at the hands of people supposedly protecting the pedestrians. But on Tuesday, I threw caution to the winds and waltzed right up to the corner as bold as brass, and twice as impudent, because after all, I knew (and they knew!) that they couldn't very well run over the Easter Bunny. The police officer on duty said, "Okay, Bugs" and then waved me safely to the other side, although I had to point out that I was technically the Easter Bunny and not Bugs Bunny. Honestly, I don't know what they're teaching them at police academy these days.

It's interesting that you can walk right past people on the street while wearing a bunny costume, and they don't even look at you twice. This is what you call Easter Bunny confidentiality in the healthcare field, and our friends at HIPAA would be so proud. Tuesday turned out to be a quiet day in the Clinic when I walked in, so I caused no sensation in there. In fact, I heard one woman on line say, "Did I just see a rabbit go by?" and everyone else said no. I'm thinking that's about as lack of sensation as you can get in a costume. I was a big hit in Finance, where everyone loved my costume, even Mario the Croatian painter, who was at his usual post on a ladder in the hallway. When I got to my office, one of my co-workers said, "Mad Hatter!" I said to Bill later that there is no costume so iconic that people won't get it wrong, and it's really true that costume appreciation is a lost art. It goes without saying that our newest employee in the department just thought I was a complete nut. Although later, when I was going on my rounds to trick-or-treat, she said, "Bring me back anything that you get!" I had to tell her to please not get her hopes up.

As usual, I stopped by at the parties in the nursing home and Adult Day Care, and they were fun and festive as always. Trick-or-treating at the hospital is a chancy proposition at best, and this was no different, with some departments awash in fun-size candy bars, and others so desperate for candy that I was lucky to get out of there in one piece. In fact, I suffered a net loss of candy bars when I crossed over the courtyard, and a colleague filched two treats from my basket as I walked past. In the Foundation office, they felt bad about having no candy, so they gave me an apple instead, which I was afraid was a little too heavy for the cheesy straw basket that I was using as a costume accessory. Bill said that I had to give out malted milk eggs, being the Easter Bunny and all, but I said that was the opposite of what I wanted, since people should give ME candy because I was the one trick-or-treating. But I happened to have a bag of malted milk eggs, so I gave them out in my travels, and people seemed to enjoy that. (Although our newest employee in Purchasing had apparently never heard of them, and asked me what they were like, and I said to Bill later that I discovered it's practically impossible to explain a malted milk egg to someone who's never had one.) It turned into a kind of a long and tiring afternoon, traipsing around the campus in 70 degree weather wearing a plastic tablecloth and fuzzy slippers, and because I used the shirt and pants I take camping with me, everywhere I went I smelled of suntan lotion. I also made a special trip to the Mental Health department, where I walked up to the receptionist window and said, "I don't know if you can help me. My problem is that I think I'm the Easter Bunny." They laughed.

After work, I hippity-hopped right home, not to mention quick like a bunny, so that Bill could take my picture, and I could get ready for trick-or-treaters beating a path to our door. I was surprised to get our first caller, a toddler dressed as a dinosaur, at 6PM because they usually start later than that. What with the unseasonably warm weather and getting an early start, I thought that would be an indication that we'd be in for a busy night, but that's not how it turned out. We didn't get our next caller until almost 6:30, and after that they tended to come singly or in pairs, rather than in larger groups and closer together. This struck me as a very strange year for costume choices, mostly for what there wasn't, rather than what there was. Last year I had a run on witches, and this year I didn't have a single one until the last group of youngsters at 8:45. That was also when I had my one and only Jason and Scream, and I had no Michael Myers at all, which are usually more well represented. I didn't have a single ghost, wizard, Superman (and isn't there a new movie of that?), Spiderman, SpongeBob SquarePants, or any of the various Star Wars characters. What I had the most of was 6 pirates, 4 Ninjas, 4 vampires, 4 princesses, 3 angels, 3 skeletons, 3 genies, 2 Tinkerbells, 2 Batmans and 2 devils. Although truth to tell, the angels and devils were actually two and a half each, because one girl was dressed as a combination angel-devil. The single costume choices ran the gamut, including a clown, a fireman, a policeman, a king, a cowgirl, alien, zombie, bunny, Scooby Doo, Cookie Monster, Elmo, Little Bo Peep, Zorro, Freddy Kruger, a Viking and a girl dressed as a boy. There was also an infant dressed in a costume that the family variously described, in broken English and mysterious hand gestures, as either a cat or a cow, I couldn't tell which. My favorite costume of the night was a girl who came as a Desperate Housewife, complete with cold cream, curlers and a ratty terrycloth bathrobe. Did I laugh!

When the dust finally settled, we had 82 callers, and while I hate to complain because I know people who have none, I still thought with the weather as mild as it was, that we would have more. Of course, we all know that left-over Halloween candy is always popular at work, where they will eat anything that isn't nailed down and stops moving long enough for them to catch it. In fact, earlier in the day at work, I thought I noticed someone following me around with a knife and fork and muttering something about "hassenpfeffer" under their breath, but I'm sure I must have been mistaken.