And then suddenly 320 kilos of acorns roll out of your wall: woodpeckers stocked up in this house in California | The best of the web

The concerned Sonoma County family had called Nick’s Extreme Pest Control when they spotted some worms crawling out of a small hole in the bedroom wall. Manager Nick Castro came to the scene and discovered that it was mealworms. But why were they in the hollow wall? They enjoyed a bizarre feast of acorns, it turned out a little later.

“It was very strange,” Castro told CNN. “I had never seen worms in combination with acorns.” After the pest controller made a four-inch hole in the bedroom wall to investigate what was going on, acorns promptly poured out of the hole. Lots of acorns. And it just didn’t stop. “They just kept coming,” said the American.

Finally three more holes were drilled in the wall, from which a total of almost 320 kilos of acorns rolled out, good for eight large garbage bags full. It is suspected that it concerns the gigantic stock of – they have not stolen their name – a pair of acorn woodpeckers. The woodpeckers probably worked on this impressive collection for at least 2 to 5 years.

Acorn woodpeckers occasionally store their acorns near houses, in rain gutters for example. But rarely indoors. Castro discovered that the clever birds here dropped their acorn treasures, which they found in several nearby oak trees, through a hole in the chimney. Then they entered the attic through a hole in the fireplace and from there they dropped acorns into the hollow wall.

Castro has worked in the industry for 20 years but has never seen anything like it, he says. “On a scale of 1 to 10, this is really a 10,” he laughs. “What are the chances of you encountering something like this?”