my good reader sarah l. asks, does hilde have pica?
  
i knew what she meant, though i don't recall learning the term. so i look it up. because my word girl is busy and has taught me how to pick my own and copy and paste like a magpie.

Pica is the compulsive eating of material that may or may not be foodstuff. The material is often consumed in large quantities without regard for nutritional consequences. The medical term comes from the Latin for magpie (Pica pica), a bird that by folklore incessantly gathers objects to satiate its curiosity. Many terms have been coined to describe certain picas. These terms have in common a Greek root for the material ingested followed by phagia, for "eating."

only a few patients come to the physician complaining of their unusual eating habit. frequently, patients believe that their behavior represents a disordered psyche and are reluctant to admit to this symptom. hilde is clearly not embarrassed by her pica habit, and does it openly, whenever and wherever the opportunity presents. only occasionally she will cry discretely in the corner and perhaps disgorge the beloved indigestible object whereupon she will directly wink avidly for standard treats.
a permissive, nonjudgmental line of questioning by the physician is clearly important when a pica is suspected.
"are there things you feel you simply must eat?" she can't rightly say. this is a rhetorical question and the proof is in the pudding. um, pudding...
a person may not recognize that a "habit" in fact may be a pica.  
a mentally disturbed or retarded person may impulsively ingest any available object, suffering the medical consequences thereof. i would not say hilde is retarded, and it's not like she only eats blue or orange plastic things, though she likes actual food that is those colors, and even wild animals make the mistake of ingesting plastic mistaken for living things, and she does eat some things that are organic but not common foods, like sticks and dirt.
i'll have to ask if hilde has an iron deficiency, which is funny after all these years of gradual resignation to the fact that she's just hilde.