Have you ever heard of the proverbial thief in the henhouse? Well in our home it is a little different. We have a thief in the garage.
My eldest son has been religiously collecting acorns practically wherever he goes. He spends part of his precious outdoor school recess time collecting them from the playground. He stops on walks to collect them. He visits botanical gardens and searches for any that the gardeners might have missed. His goal, he tells me, is to plant an entire stand of oak trees once spring comes and the ground thaws.
Of course, I am not sure where this stand of trees will go, since our backyard (and front yard) is practically a forest already. But this is his dream. He is also convinced that every apple seed he saves will turn into a tree laden with heavy fruit, shining in the sun.
Proudly he has collected this acorns, pointy and round, capped and naked. His “piles and piles” of acorns have collected in a bucket in the garage.
Yesterday, he came home from school, pockets loaded down once again. He headed into the garage later that evening to add to his collection, only to find that it was gone! After confirming that Dad didn’t move the collection somewhere else, we had to come to one conclusion. That a furry-tailed thief has been crawling under the garage door and making off with the stash. We explained to our son that for a squirrel in the winter, this must be like discovering a lost cave full of pizza.
Now it all makes sense: The bag of bird seed that when opened yielded a layer of shells instead of seed. The mysterious noises coming from the other side of the door.
The new stash of acorns is now safely secured in a lidded container, with the exception of one lone acorn, set to prove the theory. And no! We can’t have a squirrel for a pet.
Mary Ann Romans writes about everything related to saving money in the Frugal Blog, technology in the Computing Blog, and creating a home in the Home Blog. You can read more of her articles by clicking here.
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