One Red Squirrel And Hundreds Of Black Walnuts: A Fall Tale

By Shannon Hicks

Tim and Barbara Snyder had some help with their fall cleanup this year. It seems a red squirrel found a bounty of black walnuts in the Snyders’ yard, and decided he wanted them. All of them.

The only problem is, the squirrel picked up all the black walnuts that had fallen to the ground but then it moved them into the shed where the couple stores their yard and gardening tools.

Barbara was the first to notice the work that had been done earlier this month.

“The yard was almost empty of black walnuts and my first thought was ‘Did the lawn guys pick them up?… Why?’” she said with a laugh. “We have a black walnut tree, and usually the yard is just full of them in the fall.”

When Barbara went to get something out of her shed recently, instead of the tools she was expecting to see when she opened the door she was surprised at the sight of hundreds of black walnuts.

 “It’s just filled to the brim with black walnuts. The seed spreader, every available pot, they’re all full,” said the Sandy Hook resident. “It almost looks like someone would have done it as a joke, but my husband said he thought it was a squirrel.”

After doing a little research, Barbara decided it must be a red squirrel preparing for winter that brought on The Great Black Walnut Relocation. Black walnuts are indeed the food of choice for all squirrels, she said.

 “I read that gray squirrels tend to bury their winter supplies, but red squirrels stack their findings,” she said. “These are very neatly stacked. It’s the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time.”

She did see one red squirrel while in the shed, and thinks — hopes! — that it was just the one who had moved into the shed.

“There were enough nuts, though, that I’m thinking it may be for a family. It can’t be just that one little guy,” she said.

So then the couple faced a conundrum: Would the red squirrel who has targeted their shed as a storage warehouse cause damage if they remove the walnuts from their current location? Or if they decide to move the squirrel itself, would it survive the winter?

The Snyders have a Have-A-Heart trap they could use to move the critter out of the shed, but at this point in the season they are hesitant to relocate their new tenant.

“We would worry about him,” said Tim. “We talked to someone who offered to move him for us, who promised us he would bring him to a nice place.”

“We’re worried about relocating him, though,” said Barbara. “I read that it may not give the squirrel enough time to prepare for winter again.”

Last week the couple made a decision: To move the walnuts and hope the squirrel takes the hint.

“We decided to clean the nuts out of the shed,” said Barbara. “I went in and noticed they were already starting to rot, and we couldn’t have that, so we spent one afternoon last weekend moving all of them.”

The Snyders filled their wheelbarrow twice, picking up all the walnuts and stacking them behind the shed as carefully as the squirrel had stacked them indoors.

 “People told us that if we relocated the squirrel without the nuts, that he wouldn’t survive, that we had to leave the piles of nuts relatively close by. We’re hoping he gets the hint,” Barbara said. “I’m hoping that he knows where the piles are because we wanted him to move, but we didn’t want to kill him.”

By the end of last week Barbara checked on the piles outside the shed.

“They found them,” she said Thursday morning. “I can see the debris, the outer shells, and they’ve pulled the little nuts out and away from the shells that had been rotting.

“So now they’ve moved the little center nuts, and must have moved them someplace else for storage,” she continued. “It does make me feel good, because they’ve obviously found the piles, and one whole pile is completely gone.”

One reason the Snyders are so taken with the tiny tenant is its rarity.

“Usually you see lots of gray squirrels,” said Tim. “We’re constantly watching out for them when we’re driving, and they’re all over the place in the woods. But not red ones. This is unusual.”

The couple, who live on Walnut Tree Hill Road, have seen plenty of wildlife since moving into Sandy Hook.

“We’ve seen coyotes, wild turkeys, and fox. We see all of these because our neighbor is Julia Wassermann, and she has all the open space bordering her property, which also borders ours,” said Barbara. “We’ve even dealt with mice in our attic. But this guy, this is new for us.”