Welcome to Cabeza de Vaca.

Episode 14, The Great Escape, I'm Brandon Seale.

If you've ever picked prickly pairs, you know that they're nasty little things. To pick them, first you've ever picked prickly pears, you know that they're nasty little things.

To pick them, first you have to weave your arm through the larger thorns of the cactus itself,

but that's actually the easy part, because once you reach the fluorescent pink fruit,

there's a much more sinister surprise waiting for you.

The fruit itself, you see, is covered with tiny, almost furry little spines that seem to jump

out and burrow themselves deep into your fingers.

And then, when you go to pull the spines out, more often than not, they leave behind their

toxic little barbs, which leaves you feeling the spines even long after they're gone.

Running a torch over the fruits helps knock down the little spines, and I've seen ranch hands brush them off with a handful of grass. But even using these hacks, if you spend a day

picking prickly pears, you will spend a week picking the pricklies out of your hand.

And what's your reward for all this unpleasantness?

A fruit that is mostly seeds, that is neither particularly sweet nor particularly tart,

and that even then you can't really eat without roasting or boiling it.

Oh, and did I mention when the prickly pears ripen?

In August, in South Texas, when there is no water around.

Which is to say that when paleo communities were out there picking prickly pears,

they were doing so as much to stay hydrated as to stay fed.

And this was the time of year that South Texas Indians looked forward to most.

In the hungriest of times, they consoled themselves with fantasies about how full their bellies

would be in the summer months after they traveled to the great prickly pear ranges and ate their fill.

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