Jackal's Berries

Nex cakal bacca, known as Death's Berries or Jackal's Berries or Widow's Helpers or, after they have fallen from the tree, Toddler Killers, grow in obscene profusion throughout Rhode Island, with their thickest epicenter the Eastern Providence area. They bloom and come to full ripeness within a span of a few days just before full spring hits, in February or early March. They stay at full ripeness for nearly the whole year, slowly falling from the trees sometime in mid-winter, but remaining at full sweetness and full ripeness and full deadliness through all of winter, blackening, shrinking, and turning to dust with repulsive suddenness just weeks before the new batch blooms.





Some have ascribed a basic predatory intelligence to the berries, like that of the Cobra Lily or Venus Fly Trap.