Picture, if you will, sitting in your house while someone hovers over it in a construction crane. At random intervals—day or night—they hurl marbles onto your roof that bang and pop and roll down the shingles and bounce onto the gutters, the downspouts, the patio furniture or anything else that makes a heck of a lot of noise. It would be a little unnerving, wouldn’t it? Welcome to my world for the last two weeks. Instead of marbles, I’m being assaulted by acorns and hickory nuts.
At first it was just the squirrels. Because they have paws (mitts? hands?) they tend to drop only a few acorns here and there as they busily stuff their faces. Although, a tree full of squirrels each dropping the occasional nut is still very noisy.
It wasn’t until the grackle flocks arrived that things turned ugly. I wasn’t aware that grackles had beaks strong enough to tackle acorns (maybe they aren’t aware either), but whether or not they can actually eat the acorns, they are plucking them from the trees by the hundreds and sloppily dropping them everywhere. The moment they arrive it sounds like a violent hailstorm. The constant clunking and popping can last for up to 3 minutes.
After two weeks, I’m surprised there are any nuts left in the trees, yet they keep dropping. I used to jump in my seat whenever a nut hit a downspout or the neighbor’s glass patio table, but now I’m pretty immune. When startled visitors shriek “What was THAT???” My reply is simply “What was what?”