Cute Little Fruit Stickers

I spent almost all of my day yesterday trying to rebuild my late model Lawnboy recoil starter pulley - because the string frayed off as I was starting her up. After about, oh four hours of tinkering, I came to the conclusion that I'm not a small engine mechanic - and was going to have to rake those leaves by hand.

In the course of setting the lawn and compound up for the winter, I usually reserve some leaves to pile into the garden, and toss some compost on top of it. As I was shoveling my black gold out of my permanent compost pile, I noticed a couple stickers. Yes, they were those cute little fruit stickers that they put on apples and pears to tell you that it's an apple or a pear... sometimes they even tell you useful information like country of origin. Sometimes they'll even inform you they're organic. But not the sticker - The sticker is a chunk of bleached cut-down tree dyed with petroleum based ink using adhesive made from Mr. Ed's ground up hoves and bones. Mildly ironic, no? Welcome to Blasphemes.

But what really caught my attention is that through the process of compost - which is bacteria and rot and worms and heat - a glorious carpiphony of nature - the sticker survived. Hmmm... if that stupid sticker could survive that - I wonder what would happen if you accidentally ate the stupid thing? Maybe it would make it through your digestive juices - maybe it's non-degradable? So after the earth expunges humanity, there will be stainless steel sinks and cute little fruit stickers as a reminder of our existence.

Why would you put a non-degradable sticker directly on something people are eating? They banned all lead in toys - and you're not even 'supposed' to eat that! (They also banned brass in toys, so now every door hinge in America's schools is now illegal - way to go USA)

Later in the day, in a conversation - I was told of a story about a little girl that they thought had serious asthma, and it turned out she had a, wait for it, cute little fruit sticker stuck in her air passage. Then the other discussion at the same table was about a man who's doctors were convinced he had colon cancer - they did a colonoscopy - and guess what they found? Nope, not cancer... Yep. A cute little fruit sticker! Now, granted, these two stories are all hearsay and from a second party talking around a table swapping stories -- but what's the coincidence that I happened to be thinking about this, and then I'm presented by not one, but two anecdotal stories about cute little fruit stickers the same day?

Whoa.

Allow me to offer my solutions to this non-problem that should be a problem:

1) make these labels out of edible products. It wouldn't be hard. Rice paper, soy ink and vegetable gum.

2) Use a laser to burn the skin of the fruit. That'd be awesome. But probably even a small laser would be impractical.

3) Use a branding iron - which can be done in the processing conveyor belt.

There you go gang. And remember - wash your produce, and be sure to take those cute little stickers off before you chomp.