The pitter-patter on my roof

Category: Puttering Around The House | Posted: Fri Sep 01, 2006 3:40 pm

We have two large pecan trees on the north side of the house with several limbs that hang over the roof.
There are pecans up there but for the most part, they are either hollow or the nut meat is complete dried out from the lack of rain again this year. There is a chance for some of the still green ones to ripen successfully tho.

So sometime in mid August we started hearing - thump, rattle, rattle, rattle, clunk - as the pecans fell onto the roof, rolled down to the edge then landed on the hood of whichever of our vehicles was parked at the head of the driveway. That happened every once in a while, not often enough to be an irritation.

But late last week I started noticing that the frequency of the landings was increasing and that the pecans landing on the hood of Randy's truck were not whole but broken open. And the thumping and rattling of the pecans had been joined by the pitter-patter of tiny feet. Being way too early for "the stockings were hung by the chimney with care in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there" I knew it was not his reindeer I was hearing on the roof.

I did some sleuthing around yesterday, spying into the trees and saw squirrels up there. They apparently are picking the pecans, peeling off the outer husk, biting thru the shell and either dropping the inedible ones or eating what they can and dropping the shells. Since the number of "tree rats" up there varies, sometimes the thumping noise is infrequent. But when several decide to have dinner together the noise level rises.

The hood of the truck is almost completely covered with pecan parts and you can't walk down the driveway without hearing the familiar crunching sound with each step.

Last edited: Fri Sep 01, 2006 4:31 pm

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pondlady wrote on Fri Sep 01, 2006 4:18 pm:

LOL, your words take me back to when I lived under a pecan tree. It was a good 80 years old at that time - 1978 -. I wonder if it survived Katrina. We used to hear squirrels in the attic and occasionally find one waaaaayyyy dead. Yuk.