Once again, we here at Just a Smidge have performed vital scientific research so you don’t have to. It’s just one more in a long list of services we provide to you. I cannot come up with any of the others off the top of my head, but there must be some.
Three-fifths of our family went camping this weekend on the north coast of California. Sons One and Two couldn’t make it, but fortunately for our neighboring campers, Son Number Three is loud enough to make up for their absence. And fortunately for us, there is no physical way that he could eat enough to make up for the absence of his brothers, so we were still able to fit all three of us and enough food for three days into only one full-size Chevy Suburban.
I don’t think any of us ever planned to perform scientific research studies and collect valuable, societally-helpful data while visiting the foggy and windswept coast near Fort Bragg – they just sort of happened organically.
For instance, I determined through three nights in a tent, “sleeping” on the ground, that almost all of the 53-year-old male body is highly adverse to spending even one night in a tent, sleeping on the ground. The only part of me that didn’t hurt after night one were my toes. (And by “didn’t hurt,” I mean that my toes hurt no more than the regular amount.)
We deduced, through rigorous testing, that given any amount of time in front of a campfire, a 17-year-old male will not stop trying to see what melts and what doesn’t. The research also concluded that the same is true with 53-year-old males.
We concluded, after an unfortunate sharp ice vs. aluminum cans incident, that a single twelve-pack of Diet Coke, when purchased at a campsite general store, can cost as much as a 2006 Honda Civic.
Despite a concerted effort to avoid them, we were forced to study banana slugs, because they just kept coming at us from all directions. We tried our best to determine any conceivable reason as to why they exist, but sadly, none were found. We apologize to you, the reader, for the lack of conclusions regarding the banana slug. We only know that they are abnormally large, insanely yellow, and super gross.
Our most helpful scientific research happened by accident. Our friends we were camping with were planning to make everyone French toast in the morning, and at some time during the previous evening, the bread was unpacked from the storage tub. There were three full loaves of bread to feed the eight of us. Two of the loaves were just regular bread, and the third was gluten-free, since two of the other campers tolerate gluten just about as well as we all tolerate banana slugs.
By sheer accident, we set up a perfectly controlled experiment when we all went to sleep that night and forgot to put the bread away.
The campgrounds of the north coast of California do not have bear boxes. Apparently, the Lake Tahoe bears have not been able to send the memo out to the coast about how to properly terrorize campsites. And the Lord knows none of them will ever leave Tahoe to explore any other part of California or Nevada. How would they find the ingredients for their s’mores in the wild?
Our family has a little bit of experience with bears and bear boxes, so we were surprised when these campsites didn’t come with giant steel containers to keep your food and small children in. My wife decided that this meant there were no bears in the coastal woods, and we all just went with that for her so she could sleep.
What the campground did have a lot of was raccoons. All the trash can stations had raccoon notices (for the campers, not the raccoons) and thick wooden covers that would do nothing to stop a real bear, but were apparently heavy enough to thwart the trash pandas.
Here’s what they would have looked like if they were on top of a similar trash can station at a completely different campground, and it was daytime:
Even though the trash was locked up tight, it seems the campers (our group included) accidentally leave enough food out overnight on a regular basis that the masked thief population was large – both in numbers and girth – and stayed local, just like the insane domesticated bears of Tahoe.
So, there they were – three loaves of bread sitting side by side out on our picnic table in the dark, while we were all in our tents, laying in our sleeping bags and wondering how we forgot how much sleeping on the ground sucks. (Dramatic, weird, AI-generated reenactment photo below)
In the morning, the results of our accidental bread research were revealed. The picnic table told the whole story with glaring clarity. What was missing? The two loaves of regular bread. What was still there, completely untouched? The gluten-free loaf.
And when I say untouched, I mean unmoved, still wrapped, unopened, completely unscathed in any way. The gluten-free bread was packaged exactly the same as the regular bread. Same plastic see-through bag, same twist tie, same everything. And remember, as far as we know raccoons can’t read English. So, they are going by sight, smell, and feel.
When it comes to food, raccoons are black and white. (See what I did there?) You could do a ten-year study about different foods with humans and come up with no concrete conclusions, because people are dumb people have different tastes. But leave food out overnight in raccoon country and they WILL take it. That fact is not in dispute. It doesn’t matter what kind of food it is, it just needs to be food.
So what would cause a large group of the world’s number one nocturnal scavengers to leave a perfectly good loaf of bread behind, with a full seven to eight hour window to steal it? There’s only one answer.
The findings of our scientific experiment support what we have always suspected – gluten-free bread sucks. And not only does it suck, but we cannot in good conscience continue to classify it as food.
The trash pandas have spoken.
See you soon,
-Smidge
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It’s so true! GF bread, except for frozen waffles, is usually pretty terrible! That’s definitely proof! 😂