The Kissing Bug

I was in scouting most of my childhood. We did a lot of activities, including spending weekends in Northern Arizona on nature outings for which my father was sometimes chaperone. During the winter, our troop would sell mistletoe for the season. To do this, our troop and some dads would go up into the Northern Arizona forests and find outcrops of parasitic mistletoe growing on trees. I have no photographs of my involvement in this, but I have lots of memories.

We had long pruning sticks that we would use to cut off bunches of mistletoe (no one was allowed to climb into the towering trees), gather them into bundles and then go home. This took a good part of the day. Next step was getting together to put small bunches of mistletoe into plastic bags. After that, we would pick a series of dates to sit outside grocery stores and sell these bags. I think they were priced at 25-cents each. We donated the proceeds to different charities over the years.

I remember being very enthusiastic about this project. It was fun harvesting the mistletoe, bagging it and selling it. My strongest memory of the project was how sticky my hands would get from the juice of the squished berries.