Air Date: Week of September 26, 1997

Facts about... ways people get rid of unwanted zucchini.

Transcript

CURWOOD: Fall frosts have started to arrive, and for gardeners that means one thing: no more zukes! Yes, somehow zucchinis almost always produce an abundant harvest. And inexperienced growers are left wondering what to do with it all. In Mount Gretna, Pennsylvania, there's a holiday, which consists of dumping your extra zucchini on a neighbor's porch -- in the middle of the night of course. And in some communities, leaving your car doors unlocked? That guarantees a carful of the squash. Zucchinis have also been known to bring out the worst in people. A New York City man once stuck up a bar by stuffing a zucchini in a paper bag and saying it was a gun. The jury at his trial was dismissed for laughing whenever the issue of the weapon came up. A second jury didn't do much better; it couldn't agree on whether a zucchini was a weapon. Another jury did finally convict the zucchini bandit, who went to jail. The lesson here, I guess: don't be too aggressive about serving zucchini or you could serve time. And for this week, that's the Living on Earth Almanac.