I found that Dad has two tubs of a product called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Birdacious Bugberry Bark Butter\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in the basement. It’s a substitute for peanut butter as a lure for birdfeeders: smear it on something, cover it in seeds, and watch the birds flock in.<\/p>\n
I didn’t ask whether it is more or less expensive than peanut butter, nor do I know which to guess.<\/p>\n
On the one hand, it seems like it might be produced cheaper: a substitute not meant for human consumption\u00e2\u20ac\u201dalthough the package doesn’t say so\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcould be made with cheaper ingredients, and subjected to less stringent quality control, especially health controls. (It’s supposed<\/em> to contain bugs!) Further, pricing an inferior substitute higher than what it’s supposed to replace isn’t value for money, and at first blush seems a business model for failure.<\/p>\n On the other hand, consumers rarely operate with perfect rationality, and people can be particularly irrational about products for pets, even vicarious pets like wild birds at the feeder. I can easily imagine the dupes willing to accept inflated prices making up for whatever profit is lost to picky buyers checking the price tag. Circumstantial evidence to that effect: the packaging advertises \u00e2\u20ac\u0153with calcium!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I mean really: is nutritional content really a reason to select food for wild animals?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I found that Dad has two tubs of a product called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Birdacious Bugberry Bark Butter\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in the basement. It’s a substitute for peanut butter as a lure for birdfeeders: smear it on something, cover it in seeds, and watch the birds flock in. I didn’t ask whether it is more or less expensive than peanut […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mdlake.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}