California
Craftsman discovered hundreds of kilos of acorns in a chimney – a woodpecker had hidden them there
Enough to do: In California, a craftsman removed more than 300 kilograms of acorns from a chimney.
© Facebook / Nick Castro
Busy, busy: In California, a woodpecker has done a great job. When a craftsman was supposed to clean a house there, never-ending quantities of acorns spilled out of a chimney.
Actually, exterminator Nick Castro had a narrowly defined job: The owners of a house in Santa Barbara, California, had asked him to examine their property for mealworms. However, the job ended in an unexpectedly spectacular way: When Castro reached behind a wall behind which the fireplace was located, countless acorns spilled out towards him.
The flood of acorns didn’t seem to want to stop, in the end there was a whole mountain of acorns on the floor of the room. Expressed in numbers, Castro estimates that he fished out eight garbage bags from the affected chimney, which would be about 320 kilograms.
Speaking to The Dodo, Castro soon had to retract even his initial guesses about the amount of acorns: “We thought the acorns would only come up about a quarter of the way up the wall. But it turned out they went all the way up attic of the house.” The acorn stack is said to have reached a height of six meters.
An acorn woodpecker in action. In California, one of the animals had chosen a house.
© Imago Images
Apparently an acorn woodpecker had raged in and around the house, a relatively small bird with a red crest of feathers on its head. Normally, the animals bore their holes in dying tree stumps and collect their acorns there. “But the instinct to put an acorn in a hole and keep it is very strong in these birds,” Old Dominion University graduate student Angela Brierly told The Guardian.
Casto also suspects that the chimney was too deep as a “hole” for the bird: it was able to put more acorns in its supply, but then could no longer reach them. Incidentally, the exterminator was able to save himself the search for the suspect: while he was still working on the house, the acorn woodpecker flew in again and wanted to put more acorns in “his” house.
Source: “The Guardians”