To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [NAFEX] squirrels cleaning walnuts?
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2003 15:55:37 -0700
This isn't quite a fruit question, but I'm hoping some of you also grow nuts.
It's that season of year when I am finding recently-buried nuts in my
piles of leafmould and compost. I have lots of filbert trees, so I
expect to find them, but I am also finding walnuts. I have seen a
squirrel hurrying along branches with the green husk of a walnut in
its mouth. The walnuts I am digging up, though, are missing the
green husk. They are not commercial walnuts that someone has put out
to feed the squirrels, because they are fresh nuts, pale in colour
and tasting completely different from older ones. So what is going
on? Do the squirrels remove the husks before they bury the walnuts?
If so, I know the new owner of a house with a walnut tree who is
exasperated with how long it takes her to remove the husks. Maybe we
can enlist some squirrels as helpers. After all, fishermen in Asia
have been using cormorants to catch fish, so surely we could train a
few squirrels.
--
Diane Whitehead Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
maritime zone 8
cool mediterranean climate (dry summer, rainy winter - 68 cm annually)
sandy soil