A squirrel eating a giant nut…. or maybe getting ready to throw a strike.
When you think of nuts, you usually think of small, brown colored, hard shelled clumps that go just as good in your grandma’s favorite baking recipe as they would inside of a squirrel’s 
stomach. And when you think of walnuts, you definitely don’t think of a large, heavy orb that looks more like a tennis ball than something you’d stick in a nutcracker’s mouth. But that big green ball you see the squirrel holding up there…. yep, that’s a walnut! Or at least, what a walnut looks like late in its development stage….
One of my favorite Saturday Squirrel photos I’ve ever taken featured a sciurine hauling one of these massive payloads up a tree using just its mouth! It was also in that post that I first learned from Jenn’s Big Guy just what those big green things at the park were. Since the squirrel who was chomping on the oversized snack in today’s post wound up dropping (or maybe throwing in my direction) the walnut in his haste to get away from my dangerous camera by climbing the nearest tree, I was able to get a nice photo of this half-eaten, unripened delicacy…
Anyone want sloppy seconds?
The big green husk is why we don’t associate this image with what we think of as a walnut. The more commonly seen shelled nut forms inside of this green cocoon. And since squirrels generally only like what’s inside of the nut itself (which is why they are such messy eaters), the bite marks you see are undoubtedly there with the intent to remove the nasty covering in order to get at the good stuff buried inside. It seems like a lot of trouble to go through for such a small critter to get something to eat… but then again, it gives them something tough to file down their ever-growing front teeth on so they don’t end up looking like Scrat…
So crack open a big green walnut to share with your favorite Saturday Squirrel, and have a great weekend everyone!
WOW…….obviously it’s a lot of work getting that outer coating OFF since some squirrel gave up on that one pod with the bite marks on it! Know what else? That first photo DOES look like that guy is about to try his paw at nut-bowling………….
Pam
I put this post together after I got home from bowling last night, so I laughed when I noticed that! There was a squirrel up in one of the trees removing the walnuts and dropping them all over the place, and all I could think of is that I’d probably get knocked silly if one of them hit me!
wow!
It’s like a person trying to eat a really big hamburger…
Now I know what those big green things are!!! I bet he was so excited to get that walnut.
Yes, and just as ticked off that I wound up making him drop it!
You are evil…😁
Exceptionally cute!
I wouldn’t want my squirrels any other way…
Well, I never knew what a walnut house looked like until now. Lucky squirrel!
If only all nuts had that kind of protection…
We had a beautiful walnut tree that came down during a storm one winter. It wasn’t just the squirrels after them, either. The bigger birds were fond of them too. I think in the 10 years we had it, I got two nuts. The critters got the rest.
I keep telling you I never see the squirrels. I have been officially assured that we have a LOT of them, but they live upstairs, tops of the oak trees and rarely come to earth … probably because all the predators are down here — coyotes and fishers and raccoons and wild cats. So they stay up there were annually, they chew up the wires from our cable installer. Yum.
If the cable company put a cover over the wires like that walnut has, there would never be any more service interruptions…
At least they don’t eat away at the kitchen window screen…twice in less than a month’s time! I wish mine would stay in up the stratosphere rather than come to earth to torture peeps and pets. 😆
You need more walnuts to distract them. Or maybe throw at them….
No doubt a Cleveland squirrel (despite yesterday’s loss). #GoIndians
Right now our property is littered with lots of green nuts, and our planting beds are dug up where squirrel friends have decided to store said nuts for the winter. Sometimes the squirrels even open the green nut before planting it, leaving us sharp pointy shells to look at/step on. Life is not so exciting here.
I guess Fuzzy’s descendants had some remodeling ideas of their own. That is one bad habit squirrels share with me, they are very, very messy and refuse to clean up after themselves….
the crows are drooping them from the wires and they (walmuts) use my roof!
I’ve never seen a partially-developed walnut! I’m sure you’re being cursed ES by the squirrel who threw his nut at you! Ha! Mona
It’s weird how many people search for those big green balls to find out what they are… and my post comes up. I’m an expert on something now according to Google!
You won’t believe this one! So I’ve been taken care of four abandoned baby squirrels they live in my garden found the day I was weeding, so had to stop that so they could hide from predators. Anyway I feel this was intentional but maybe not. Big squirrels were trying to hurt babies and mad I wouldn’t feed them and I shot with hose when one bite a babies tail making it scream and eventually pass away due to infection. So the big ones took these huge alien walnut balls and got on my roof and tossed one in my drain eExhaust causing my toilet tub and sink to overflow with crap water and waterfalls in basement. Many hours later we found the problem and had to remove old cast piping in basement then drop weight from roof to bust it free. What a mess
Thank you, these are everywhere at my local park and I just sprained my ankle on one while jogging…wanted to know what the heck they are 🙂
You certainly aren’t alone since this is one of my most popular posts every August and September! Those green balls are one of life’s mysteries that never get explained to us as kids…