Exterminator Nick Castro was inspecting a home for mealworms when he discovered something … nuts. Tens of thousands of acorns came cascading out from behind a bedroom wall.
“Unreal,” Castro posted on his company’s Facebook page. As he reached behind the wall, the little oak nuts kept spilling out. Castro – who owns Nick’s Extreme Pest Control in Santa Rosa, California – said he filled a total of eight garbage bags with 700lbs of acorns.
They had been stashed there by acorn woodpeckers – peculiar little birds with a shock of red feathers on their head – who are prodigious acorn collectors. Normally, the birds store thousands of acorns in small holes they drill into dying tree stumps, which they protect with outsize pluck.
“But that instinct to fit an acorn in a hole and store it is pretty strong with these guys,” explained Angela Brierly, a PhD researcher at Old Dominion University who studies the species at the Hastings Natural History Reservation.
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