Squirrels seem to go a little crazy this time of year. Like other Athens neighborhoods, ours has a lot of Loblolly pine trees.
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| Left: An immature Loblolly pine cone; Center: Pine cone stripped of scales and developing seeds; Right: Two scales from an immature pine cone that were removed by a squirrel in an effort to eat the seed. (photo taken 8/26/2020, Dale Hoyt) | |
This past week we have seen the things above on the sidewalks and streets of our neighborhood. Squirrels are responsible for the mess. In their efforts to get the developing seeds in each cone they have to chew through the cone scales. There will be a pair of seeds between each overlapping cone scale and those seeds are packed with nutrients.
Most of the Loblolly pines we see in our neighborhood have hundreds of these pine cone scales scattered on the ground beneath the tree, but an occasional tree has none. This may be a "lucky" tree - one in a squirrel free locality, or, it could be that the squirrels don't like the taste of the cones. A study of squirrels that live in the Ponderosa pine forests of the western US found that they had their favorite trees and ignored some others. Tests showed that the favorite trees had fewer of the chemical compounds that make pine trees smell so nice. That may be one of the reasons why pines produce such chemicals -- to keep the squirrels away.
