"Pine Squirrel Caches," written by Caitlin Fox, read by Caroline Kurtz.
"Last September, I went on a hunt for buried treasure. I had heard of a man who put himself through college collecting pine nuts from squirrels' winter caches and selling them to the local grocer. He must have learned their hiding places and robbed their summer's work in late fall. I had pictured uncovering stores of hundreds of smooth, white pine nuts, individually shelled, like candy.
I found such a squirrel during a walk in a pine forest. I sat down to watch. It moved in a flurry of activity - up and down the trees, leaping between branches, racing along the ground. It did not appear to be operating on a very tight energy budget. Repeatedly, the squirrel climbed high into a tree, chewed off a fresh pine cone, and either dropped it to the ground below or carried it down the tree in its mouth. It then buried the cones in holes in piles of decaying cone scales.
When would the squirrel open each cone and cache the seeds? Where were its storehouses? Impatient, I decided to search for myself. I found piles of cone scales three feet deep with tunnels going in all directions. Within the pile of cone debris, I found dozens of cones, but no hidden hordes of individually shelled seeds."
(Broadcast: Fieldnotes, 9/28/14 & 9/29/14)
