As we move from summer into fall (ie. autumn), the squirrels ratchet up their nut-collecting efforts. In particular, they spend long hours in the oak trees harvesting acorns. This entails them picking them off the branches and throwing them down where they congregate on the ground. Woe be to anyone who walks under the trees during the height of this activity, for the rain of acorns can be perilous to say the least!
We have one such tree just down the road from us, and you can almost always see the squirrels scampering around up in the branches. And if you don’t see them, you can’t miss the evidence of them as the acorns fall down, one every few seconds. Walking underneath while they are at work is quite an adventure.
But far more treacherous is a string of oaks planted right on the side of the road on Brockley, a street a couple of minutes walk from us. The trees are ancient and tall, close together, and full of acorns and acorn-harvesting squirrels. Here’s what the edge of the road looks like underneath these trees (obviously some of these have fallen naturally as well):
Last week, walking underneath, I was hit by an acorn. Luckily it only glanced off my shoulder, but even then it hurt. I can only imagine the pain were one to land right on the top of your head! At the time squirrels were at work above, the the frequency of falling nuts was greater than one per second. Only instants before I was hit I considered crossing the road for safety’s sake!
Eventually, presumably, the squirrels will grab the fallen acorns and either bury them (we see them doing this all over our yards) or stash them somewhere secret. They live off them in the winter (squirrels can wake during the snow season) and early spring. The acorns the squirrels don’t get are collected by bluejays (who ferret them away to similarly secret stashes in trees) or deers (and this year we have seen more deer than ever before) who eat them from the ground.
Your story takes me back to my youth in the Niederdhünn. I knew the oak tree as Eiche
the acorn as Eichhorn
the squirrel as Eichhörnchen
the bluejay as Eichelhäher.
Fascinating how the animals are named after the food they live on!