WALNUT ASSAULT

Among the mature trees surrounding our house are several black walnuts, including one that hangs over the 1928 one-story addition where our kitchen sits. Its open ceiling allows us to hang pots, pans, and stemware from the joists – shall we just call it a rustic look? – and I’ve sometimes considered installing a skylight or two.

On the other side of that roof, squirrels strip the nuts from the trees early in the season of a typical year. Watching their frantic action can be quite amusing, first as the leaves on a branch shake furiously and then as a squirrel bounds away with a large ball in its mouth.

A few nuts might actually survive into autumn. More likely, we find them buried the next spring as we prepare the new garden and sift compost. Having lived here for a decade-and-a-half, we think we know what to anticipate as the seasons advance.

Not this year, to our surprise, at least as far as the walnuts go.

Our awareness that something was amiss began in the middle of the night. Was somebody trying to break into the house?

The next morning, though, as wind whipped around the house, the noise really picked up. Imagine someone hitting the kitchen roof with a baseball bat. Repeatedly, sometimes three or four a minute. The whack was enough to make us jump.

I moved one car further from the house – we’d seen what large hail did to a friend’s pickup truck and the damage wasn’t pretty. These nuts were larger and heavier, after all, and ones that fell on that side of the roof were bouncing into the driveway.

The tree still has a few nuts left on the branches, but the racket has slowed considerably. Instead, some of the pathways leading to the garden are now covered in walnuts. As my wife observed, it’s like trying to walk on marbles.

Between that and the noise, it’s enough to drive anyone nuts.

Or squirrelly.