Green Rain

I was walking across our vacant lot that's next to our house and noticed something falling from the sky and landing at my feet.

I looked down to see small shredded pieces of green plant material. Looking up into the sweet gum tree I was standing under I see a gray squirrel on a limb hard at work gnawing on one of the tree's seed pods. These pods contain the seeds of the sweet gum tree which squirrels enjoy eating.

These seeds must be pretty tasty to squirrels, because I tried to cut open one of the green pods to reveal them and it was way too much work.

I found a couple of the "aged" seed pods and shook loose some of the seeds and they don't appear to worth all of the labor that it takes to get out of the green ones. But then I'm not a squirrel.