ANDRE BEGIN

To say that 2021 was a good year for our black walnut trees would be an extreme understatement.

Conditions must have been ideal as our three walnut trees were creating a carpet of walnuts throughout the south west side of our property.

It was when our lawn care guy was trying to mow that part of the property that it almost sounded like gunfire as his mower kept picking them up and shooting them out, making loud clinking noises throughout the process.

When I asked him if he had any concerns about the nuts, he simply responded, “Well, it can’t be great for the machine.”

In addition, given our habit for taking Ivy the Wonder Cat out for leash walks, I occasionally found myself almost twisting an ankle on those hard little suckers when I didn’t see them.

By that time, I had already rejected the idea of collecting the walnuts and using them. Between the long list of instructions that made my eyes glaze over, the lengthy drying time needed to get at the nuts and the aggressive stains that they leave on your hands, I just couldn’t be bothered.

The problem was that because they were a favorite of squirrels and chipmunks alike, I did not want to accumulate bags of these walnuts in our garage, only to have them break in and cause damage.

To me, the only solution was to find an inconspicuous spot on the property where walnuts could sit until either garbage day or a day that I can take them directly to the dump.

I noticed that a family of chipmunks resided in one of the trees on our west property line. Perhaps moving some walnuts under their tree (which was not in the path of our lawn care guy) would be a good place just to get them out of the way temporarily. That way, the squirrels and chipmunks could still have access to them and feast away at their convenience.

For the 2021 season, stacking the nuts at the base of the tree seemed to work pretty well. The lawn care guy was happy, the squirrels and chipmunks were happy, and when available space presented itself in that week’s garbage, I could stash a few walnuts in the bags and gradually have them taken away, which made me happy.

By the time the first frost came around, the nuts were gone and we were left a clean slate for the following growing season.

In 2022, we had another strong year for walnuts. To manage the windfall, my intention was to repeat my best practice from the year before, moving the nuts out of the way, to the base of their favourite tree.

One day, while walking Ivy, I noticed that there was a pile of nuts at the base of their tree. The weird part was that I had nothing to do with it.
What was even more bizarre was that the pile grew in the days that followed.

I didn’t bother asking my partner if he was gathering the nuts and placing them there, because he was very busy at work, which didn’t leave a lot of energy for our nut relocation project.

Did I actually train the chipmunks to follow my example and to do the yard work for us, by piling nuts under their favourite tree?

Throughout 2022, the pile kept growing, forming the “wall of walnuts” until early fall when the pile started getting smaller and smaller. I presumed that they started stashing the nuts for winter. This continued until all of the nuts were gone… and with no apparent human intervention.

It really was a head scratcher! To this day, it’s still a mystery, but I appreciated the fact that whoever or whatever took care of the nuts, it saved me some serious back breaking work.

In 2023, another good year for black walnuts, as they started falling with resounding thuds, I wondered if the chipmunks would be back in action.

My first question was how long chipmunks live, to know if I was dealing with the same generation of chipmunks (who might remember how to make a “wall of walnuts”) or was this a new generation.

According to Google, they can live 2 to 5 years. Given the availability of food, the availability of hiding spots (to hide from predators) and their overall easy-going joie de vivre, it would not surprise me if ours were the same ones, aging in place, living to a ripe old age closer to 5.

I took a look at their tree, and sure enough there were about 6 or 7 freshly picked nuts at the base, given their bright chartreuse colour.

Just to reinforce the reminder that it was OK to hoard nuts, I gathered a bucket of nuts and placed them at the base of the tree like an offering to the gods. On our property, the chipmunks seem to be pretty bad-ass and at the top of the pecking order so in their minds’ that’s probably not far from the truth.

In the days that followed, they didn’t add to the pile which left me feeling a little sad.

But that feeling was short lived as I watched them running around the property with the bright green nuts in their mouths. They were all running to a different tree this year, and stockpiling the nuts in its hollow stump and branches to get ready for winter.

“Even better!” I thought to myself as there was still no pile for us to dispose of.

Even though they didn’t actually remember the trick for piling them, they did indeed save us a lot of work by moving almost all of the nuts off the lawn and over to their new dwelling.

The jury is still out on whether I actually trained them in 2022, but it’s still a weird coincidence that nuts were piled neatly by their tree.

Either way, the fact that our lawn has not been carpeted with walnuts since 2021 and the chipmunks seem more than happy to relocate them, is enough of a good news story for me, whether for Ivy’s walks or to keep our lawn guy’s machinery in good working condition… just as long as we don’t have more walnut trees sprouting in strange places.

Did you enjoy this post? If you did, your likes and shares are most appreciated.
If you haven’t already, please check out the rest of my blog at andrebegin.blog. From there, you can click on the “Follow” button to receive future posts directly in your inbox.
Sincere thanks for reading!
Have a great day,
André