So those who live around Oak trees know that Oaks have some coordination in their production from year to year. Most years will be light acorn years, a couple heavy, and every once in a while they will all go crazy and grow and drop shitloads of acorns. And they all do the same in the same year.
Except for one tree in my neighbors yard that overhangs much of my yard didn’t get the memo this year. I general it was a low acorn year, but this tree is a rebel and decided to have a heavy year, dropping more that the dozen or so other Oaks in neighboring yards combined. The squirrels of course took notice, and have learned that acorns dropped onto my sidewalk crack and knock the hat off. Then they come down and eat them. Except they drop hundreds more on the sidewalk then they eat, and my sidewalk would have been about 6 inches deep in acorn and acorn hats if I didn’t spend the last couple months cleaning them up. SO I swept them up and started putting them in those big paper lawn bags we all use.
I had a couple set up, one in front and one in back I would dump the shovel into. Unfortunately I didn’t think it through very well, because when one was full and I tried to carry it to the curb so they could take it for composting, I learned that a lawn bag full of Acorns weighs around 23 billion pounds, slightly exceeding the structural capacity of the bag. So after tearing a sizable hole hole in the bottom attempting to move it, I abandoned it a decided i would figure out what to do later.
While I procrastinated, the damn squirrels figured out that a bag full of acorns with a hole at the bottom makes a damn fine dispenser/feeder, so now I have a line of squirrels darting to my bag to grab a nut, then darting off to eat it.
:smack:
A word of warning: The cycle you describe is generally driven by rainfall. More water = more nuts. If one tree is overproducing the rest of the neighborhood, it could be a sign that it found a septic tank or sewer pipe to tap into.
If drains get slow or toilets start burping, act fast.
But I’m with the rest on the squirrels - let them have the nuts. They also make really good kindling for a charcoal grill.
The squirrels are going to bury the nuts all over the damn place and you’ll have more oaks than you could imagine, in all sorts of places (like your gutters and your flowerbeds and between rocks).
And they’ll leave the hats for you to clean up too, I bet. Jerks.
Well, the squirrels are also great starter fuel, except they tend to run around after you touch them off with a lighter. And a flaming squirrel is kinda bad for trees, flammable structures, hydrocarbon-fueled vehicles, flammably-clothed people, etc.
Place one large bag of de-hatted acorns in the yard. Tear hole in bottom of bag. Rig a cage full of feral cats such that each time a squirrel takes an acorn from the bag, a gate is opened and one cat is released. Rig another, larger cage such that 20 seconds after each cat is released a gate opens and one coyote is released. Expand as desired.
To clarify something said earlier, the phenomenon of every oak tree going apeshit with dropping acorns is known as a mast year. What’s really interesting is that it does NOT seem to be directly connected to rainfall, or to sunlight, or to temperature variations. Scientists actually don’t know what triggers it, and how all the trees in a region get the message. It just happens.
And, man, when it happens, holy cow. I have two gigantic old oak trees in my front yard that overhang my driveway. It is truly almost overwhelming. I’ve read that in a masy tear an oak tree can drop up to 1000X the normal annual amount of acorns.
I have no desire to monetize this invention, so purposely designed it to be scalable open architecture. I only ask that I be invited to view the show, and that you provide the appropriate beverages.
This is my 37th fall on Long Island and I don’t recall any acorn crop like this year’s. The roads are crunchy with acorns and acorn caps. Under every oak there is a layer of the things. I don’t recall ever seeing anywhere near this many.
I enjoy feeding birds in the winter. But the squirrels steal the bird food. I really don’t begrudge them, but to allow the birds their share I started buying squirrel food a few years ago. About four years ago I hit on the idea of supplementing the squirrel food with acorns I’d collected. Last year I managed to collect only enough acorns for just two or three a day for about two and a half months.
This year my squirrel food ash can is more than half full of acorns and I could spend an hour collecting enough to fill it up. Prodigious.
Last year we had more rain than usual. Not monsoons, but noticeably more than average. This year we had a mild drought. Not horrible, but without watering, lawns turned brown. I wonder if the oaks flowered more than usual this spring in response to last year’s generous water or grew the excessive amount of acorns because of this year’s dry condition.
Or do they “know” something else like an oncoming oak blight or an asteroid hitting the Earth?
