Each summer, as branches across southwest Florida begin to sag with mangos , Annabelle Tometich feels her nerves kick in.
Why it matters: As mango season gets underway, the Fort Myers author has some valuable rules of engagement, drawing from her experience with just how chaotic a fruit dispute can get.
Flashback: Not quite a decade ago, Tometich got a phone call from the Lee County jail, her then-64-year-old mother on the other end of the line.
- Someone had stolen mangos from her yard, mother told daughter, despite her warnings to leave.
- So she grabbed a BB gun and shot at their car, aiming for the tires but shattering the back window instead.
The big picture: Tometich's new memoir, "The Mango Tree: A Memoir of Fruit, Florida, and Felony," opens with her mother's arrest and launches into "a family saga that navigates the tangled branches of Annabelle's life," per the publisher .
Catch up quick: Tometich grew up in suburban Fort Myers amid a jungle of fruit trees painstakingly cared for by her Filipino mother, Josefina.
- Along with mangos and citrus, Josefina planted tropical fruits from her home country including tamarind, jackfruit and sapote.
With the fruit came the bandits.
- Tometich remembers some mornings, waking up to find someone in the yard picking oranges like it was a tree in the wild.
Her golden rule: If a mango ends up on a public right-of-way like a sidewalk, that's fair game. But walking into someone's yard without permission is many steps too far.
- "Always take the time to ask," Tometich says — especially if the trees don't have rotting mangos beneath them, a sign the owner is picking the fruit.
- "If someone cares enough to take good care of the trees," she says, "it's for a reason."
Zoom out: Josefina, who has vascular dementia, isn't in her yard as much these days, Tometich tells Axios.
- She served five years' probation over the mango incident.
Less than a year in, her probation officer offered to apply for early termination of the sentence. But she'd have to apologize before a judge, Tometich said.
- Her mother's response? "Hell no!"
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