I admit it. I tend to fixate on odd things from time to time. My latest obsession involves acorns, which are ubiquitous at this time of year if you pass the time in the company of oak trees.
Yesterday, I spent a few minutes in the park across the street from the State House here in Augusta, Maine, searching for acorns. I thought I’d place them in my facetiously named natural history museum atop one of our bookcases, where pine cones, a bird’s nest, a chunk of tumbleweed and a few small (and empty) hives are on display.
There are some large, very productive oaks in Capitol Park, and countless acorns on the ground beneath them. But there’s a problem. Almost all of the acorns have been dismembered. Or maybe decapitated would be a more accurate term. There are plenty of acorn tops to be found, and lots of what I would call acorn bodies too. But very few of them are joined together. In my 15-minute hunt, I’d estimate that no more than one acorn out of every 50 was intact.
No doubt there are acornologists (no, it's not a real word) who could explain this phenomenon. When the acorns fall from the tree, does impact cause most of the tops to fall off? Is this some small, previously unnoticed manifestation of climate change? A Facebook friend suggests that perhaps the tops are supposed to break off, to encourage germination. Or do marauding squirrels unscrew the tops before making off with the rest of the acorn? I can almost imagine a grim-faced squirrel mob screaming “off with their heads” in squirrelese while gazing up at a bushy-tailed executioner and his miniature guillotine mounted atop a stump.
Yesterday, I spent a few minutes in the park across the street from the State House here in Augusta, Maine, searching for acorns. I thought I’d place them in my facetiously named natural history museum atop one of our bookcases, where pine cones, a bird’s nest, a chunk of tumbleweed and a few small (and empty) hives are on display.
There are some large, very productive oaks in Capitol Park, and countless acorns on the ground beneath them. But there’s a problem. Almost all of the acorns have been dismembered. Or maybe decapitated would be a more accurate term. There are plenty of acorn tops to be found, and lots of what I would call acorn bodies too. But very few of them are joined together. In my 15-minute hunt, I’d estimate that no more than one acorn out of every 50 was intact.
No doubt there are acornologists (no, it's not a real word) who could explain this phenomenon. When the acorns fall from the tree, does impact cause most of the tops to fall off? Is this some small, previously unnoticed manifestation of climate change? A Facebook friend suggests that perhaps the tops are supposed to break off, to encourage germination. Or do marauding squirrels unscrew the tops before making off with the rest of the acorn? I can almost imagine a grim-faced squirrel mob screaming “off with their heads” in squirrelese while gazing up at a bushy-tailed executioner and his miniature guillotine mounted atop a stump.
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