by Mary Reid Barrow

If you are wondering where your squirrels are these days, check over here at my house where pine fronds, pinecones, pine scales and nibbled pinecone skeletons litter the car and driveway.

These are high feast days for the squirrels that have taken over the giant pine tree overhead and the persimmon trees down the drive.

Every day, I carry handfuls of cones and fronds out to the garbage and toss fallen persimmons back on the hill, but I barely make a dent.

I woke up one morning to a little treat of a pinecone, pinecone skeleton and frond on my front porch stoop, and then I saw about two dozen pinecones that had pelted the car, countless pine fronds and cones chewed to the core and what seemed like thousands of pinecone scales littering the driveway.

A sole persimmon lay alone, almost belligerently as if to complain, the pine tree isn’t the only one being assaulted by the squirrels.

Through all this I haven’t seen a squirrel. Generally, they are poking around the yard all day looking for dinner, but now they are all in the treetops.

They are plumping up for winter and what richer feast than pine nuts harvested from the cones before the cones open and drop the nuts to the ground?

I’ve read squirrels eat around the cone as if they are eating corn on the cob, pulling out the scales and grabbing the little green pine nuts under the base of each scale.

When a squirrel chews the cone from the base of the pine frond, the frond is usually a casualty too, and it falls to the ground. Another casualty of the feeding frenzy is often other pinecones that would fall naturally at some point after their pine nuts disperse on their own, but the cones are pushed overboard early by squirrels in a hurry.

Without the squirrels’ interference, a pinecone stays on the tree until the pine nuts mature, drop to the ground where if luck is with them, they take root and produce baby pine trees. The cone begins to get brittle, and, with the help of the wind and rain, usually falls to the ground within a year or so after the pine nuts drop.

In my imagination, I see a squirrel wreaking havoc as it gets its fill of pine nuts for lunch and then unable to stop feasting, heads for a persimmon tree for dessert.

These native wild persimmons have just begun to ripen and wouldn’t be falling much on their own yet, without the help of an impatient squirrel knocking one down while eating one too.

And of all the mess, the tiny persimmons are the most important thing to pick up. A pine frond caught in the car window wiper is nothing compared to a squished persimmon on the bottom of a shoe!