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8 - Orono Weekly Times Wednesday, July 14, 2010 Don't feed the coyotes GRAZE vt. 1. to feed on (growing grass, herbage, etc.) Collins Concise Dictionary Once upon a time, in a city far away where I put in a tour of duty as a lowly city hall reporter, I encountered a magnificent specimen of The Grazing Mammal, subspecies Homo sapiens. She was a city counsellor, famous for her large hats, larger purses and unfailing attendance at all civic functions that featured a complimentary food bar. This city counsellor would sweep in, usually about the time the function was winding down, engage in a little political banter for a few minutes and when (she thought) no one was looking, surreptitiously fill her capacious purse with canapés, pastries, celery sticks, cocktail wieners and other assorted hors d'oeuvres that were lying about. Hey -- no finger pointing here. I'm an old-time bottom feeder myself. When I was working my way through (okay, half-way through) college I had a night time job as a bartender. The pay wasn't great but I survived for at least three semesters on a diet that consisted pretty much of olives, orange and lime slices, maraschino cherries and beer nuts. On-the-job grazing kept me alive but I bear the scars. I still can't look at a pimiento without gagging. But I was strictly an amateur in the grazing field. I have a friend who worked security for a large Toronto hotel for many years. I once asked him what his biggest headache was -- towel thieves? Mini bar raiders? Drunks? Pickpockets? Peeping Toms? He shook his head. "Convention Coyotes," he told me. These were people -- mostly men -- who haunted the ballrooms and showrooms of the larger downtown hotels. "They'd wear a suit and tie, slap on big smile and a name tag and slip into the convention rooms around lunch time," my buddy recalled. "A lot of conventions have threefour hundred delegates in attendance, so it wasn't hard for these guys to blend right in. Some of those freeloaders ate free lunches for years." Serious grazing takes serious nerve -- but you'd have to go some to out-nerve the Kiwi who got outed in Wellington, New Zealand recently. At the Harbour City Funeral Home. That's right -- the guy was a fake mourner. According to funeral director Danny Langstraat, the grazing griever hit at least four funerals a week, hoovering up the finger food, even though he had no idea who had died. "Certainly he had a backpack with some Tupperware containers," said Langstraat. "So when people weren't looking, he was stocking up." Officials eventually got wise to his antics, took a photo of him in mid-forage and distributed it to all the local funeral homes. The 'grim eater' was out of business. The biggest mistake professional grazers make? Underestimating the enemy. Like the smart aleck yuppie who cruises up to a lonely shepherd tending his flock on a hillside one afternoon, casts a smirking glance at the host of nibbling sheep and says to the shepherd, "I'm looking for a lamb dinner. If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one?" The shepherd figures there's no way the yuppie can count every critter, so he nods. Instantly the yuppie whips out an iPhone, Googles a NASA app, calls up a GPS navigation system which scans his geographical location and gives him an ultra-high resolution photo of the hillside. He forwards the data to an image processing facility in Silicon Valley. Within seconds, his portable printer is delivering a four-colour, twenty page digitized report. The yuppie glances at the report summary turns to the shepherd and says "You have exactly 673 sheep. I'll take that lamb over there." He picks it up and places it in his car trunk. The shepherd says, "If I tell you what your profession is will you give me back my animal? The yuppie snorts, says "Sure, why not?" "You're a business consultant," says the shepherd. The yuppie is floored. "How could you possibly know that?" he says. "Pretty easy," says the shepherd. "You showed up here, even though nobody called you. You expect to get paid for an answer I already knew to a question I never asked - and most important: you don't know anything about my business." "Now open your trunk and give me back my border collie."