Acorn Watchers Wonder What Happened to Crop

The Washington Post ^ | 30 Nov 2008 | Brigid Schulte

[BGHater]

The idea seemed too crazy to Rod Simmons, a measured, careful field botanist. Naturalists in Arlington County couldn't find any acorns. None. No hickory nuts, either. Then he went out to look for himself. He came up with nothing. Nothing crunched underfoot. Nothing hit him on the head.

Then calls started coming in about crazy squirrels. Starving, skinny squirrels eating garbage, inhaling bird feed, greedily demolishing pumpkins. Squirrels boldly scampering into the road. And a lot more calls about squirrel roadkill.

But Simmons really got spooked when he was teaching a class on identifying oak and hickory trees late last month. For 2 1/2 miles, Simmons and other naturalists hiked through Northern Virginia oak and hickory forests. They sifted through leaves on the ground, dug in the dirt and peered into the tree canopies. Nothing.

"I'm used to seeing so many acorns around and out in the field, it's something I just didn't believe," he said. "But this is not just not a good year for oaks. It's a zero year. There's zero production. I've never seen anything like this before."

The absence of acorns could have something to do with the weather, Simmons thought. But he hoped it wasn't a climatic event. "Let's hope it's not something ghastly going on with the natural world."

To find out, Simmons and Arlington naturalists began calling around. A naturalist in Maryland found no acorns on an Audubon nature walk there. Ditto for Fairfax, Falls Church, Charles County, even as far away as Pennsylvania. There are no acorns falling from the majestic oaks in Arlington National Cemetery.

[MeanWestTexan]

“There are so many squirrels in my small town that every day you hear of a squirrel chewing in power, cable and phone lines causing an outage. Nothing but Rabies infected fluffy tailed rats, I tell you”

I live in Midland, TX. We never had squirrels until recently. Some asshat IMPORTED squirrels from Washington State and let them lose. They are all over now.

Mrs. MWT doesn’t let me shoot them with a pellet gun in my boxers in the front yard anymore. Says I look like white trash.

[jrawk]

OMG

Spit out my Coffee... That was funny to me. I guess because of the low likelihood a freeze could ever destroy the Mesquite Beans.

I used to chew them suckers all the time, the pods anyhow once they are yellow you chew just spit out the beans and chew them kind of like tobacco. They are sweet. Just a habit I picked up when I was young in the South West.

— lates
— jraw

[doodad]

Come down to Georgia. We had a bumper crop of nuts of all kinds. I could plant 10^6 oaks with the acorns that fell in my yard.

[Mad Dawg]

Plenty of acorns in central Virginia.

[bvw]

Brilliant!

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Normally my deck is knee deep in acorns this time of year, and I have to admit, I haven’t seen one.

[Bon mots]

When I was googling around a bit to try to figure out why I couldn’t find any acorns this year, I read on one site that oak trees seem to have evolved a strategy to produce almost no acorns in occasional years. The theory is that this keeps the population of acorn-eating critters from ballooning to the point where all the acorns would get gobbled up every year, leaving none to grow into new oak trees. Makes sense, and since apparently this has been observed before, it strikes me as a lot more likely than the alarmist “climate change” theory.

No way!
This is GoreBull Warming for sure.
Rove and Bush and Cheney.
...all those baby squirrels...

</s>

[PowderMonkey]

"Mrs. MWT doesn’t let me shoot them with a pellet gun in my boxers in the front yard anymore. Says I look like white trash."

LOL! Regulation dress for that activity in our trailer park is a flannel bath robe, and garter socks with your Wolverine boots.

[meatloaf]

Try wearing briefs instead of boxers. Works for me.

[netmilsmom]

My girls found tons of Acorns in Findlay State Park last year. Maybe Ohio should export some.

[Max in Utah]

...shoot them with a pellet gun in my boxers in the front yard anymore.

I once shot a gopher in my back yard while wearing only briefs, but I just sniped him from the bedroom window instead of going outside.

At the sound of the shot, my wife woke up to see me standing there with a .22 rifle, shaking my fist and declaring "Got the little #$@*&%$!"

[SunkenCiv]

[Doctor Raoul]

The Acorns all went to Ohio to vote and it’s a long walk back?

[SunkenCiv]

From small acorns towering dreams take root and grow
Star Ledger | 10.25.06 | CHRISTINA JOHNSON
Posted on 10/26/2006 1:55:04 PM PDT by Coleus
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1726510/posts

[snip] Amid the squirrels and jays pouncing on acorns early this fall was 10-year-old Junior Girl Scout Amanda Diacont. As Tropical Storm Ernesto whipped the white oaks around her family’s vacation campsite near Cape May, Amanda poked out of her canvas tent and swept falling acorns into empty milk jugs, working to earn her Inchworm of Service badge by contributing to the state Forest Service annual acorn collection. She filled 2 1/2 containers. [end]