Nov 13, 2014 3 min read

It’s a bumper year for acorns.

The pin oaks on the street put out so many that the little nuts are lying a half-foot deep along the curbs. They’re big, and they’ve all lost their hats, causing them to look like a collection of dusty marbles.

And it feels like you’ve been hit by a marble when one of them lands on your head. We learned that the hard way one of those warm days last week; we took our coffee out to the patio and within five minutes had to flee. You know those angry apple trees in Oz? Well, ours were oak and they were dropping nuts on our heads. It was like standing in a hailstorm.

I think we should also blame the grinnies. That’s what my dad calls chipmunks, and while I’ve always thought that was a charming name, I’m not calling them that this year, because they’re not cute. The chipmunks have followed the acorns, and now they’ve colonized the garage. Patrick says he doesn’t mind them – and in fact, he’s probably named them and has taught them to eat acorns out of his hand – but he knows he has a big problem out there. And things will only get worse next winter, because the chipmunks will go into the breeding season with bellies round and full.

The acorns are a menace. I have dings in my head that match the dings in the hood of my car. That law of physics about a small object falling with the same speed as a large one is being proven a thousand times a day in my yard. When those acorns leave the branch, they are bowling balls.

And they’re dangerous after they reach the ground, too. Acorns on the sidewalk became ball bearings underfoot. While blowing leaves this week, I stepped on an array of nuts, my feet rolled out from under me and I fell into a pile of leaves, which was not nearly as cushy as I remember from my youth.

A prodigious acorn crop is called a “mast year” for oak trees. Mast years are infrequent, and they are nature’s way of evening the score between wildlife and the trees. Some years, like this one, the birds and chipmunks and deer win. Other years, the trees are stingy with their nuts and they win. (And while researching this, I learned that acorns, like all nuts, are the tree’s ovaries, a contradiction in terms if there ever was one.)

We’ve been worried about the pin oak in our front yard. It’s losing branches, and an arborist told us it’s very old and near the end of its life. But it’s still making acorns, and that’s a good sign.

It’s also dropping lots of leaves. So far I’ve spent 10 hours blowing them to the curb, and half of them are still up there. I know this because I looked up and an acorn hit me on the cheek.

We’ll have to remove the acorns from the yard with a shovel. The leaf blower just rolls them around.

And to think I once was charmed by them. When the first acorns fell in September, I picked up a couple of really fat ones, found matching hats, and brought them inside. My daughter and I painted them to look like little men wearing berets.

Mine has a blue hat and a mustache. I hate him.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.