Shaky Shaky Seeds

Walking from our house into the village of Cold Spring gives Kai and I lots of opportunities to see odd things. For about a month there was a dead squirrel to the side of the pavement that brought us to a stop each time.  This particular dead squirrel was noteworthy because the animal that had been eating it had peeled its fur back in a way reminiscent of how children pull socks off their feet from the top down, turning them inside out in the process. In my experience, children are almost always more curious than disturbed by their encounters with nature's more gruesome aspects. Kai insisted a monster got the squirrel - it was during the weeks leading up to Halloween. I told him it was probably a hawk, he disagreed, and we left it at that. On our next walk he pointed and said "The hawk ate the squirrel." Lesson to me: present the facts and let other people make up their own minds, in their own time. Thank you for teaching that to me 39 years on, Kai.

Honey Locust pod by Andrew Dunn

Another regular sight on our walks this autumn and winter have been what we've named the Shaky Shaky Seeds. Unlike the walnuts along our walk that squirrels hid and ate almost as quick as they fell, and unlike the maple helicopter seeds which have all blown away, the Shaky Shaky Seeds have been sitting unwanted under their mother trees for months. Good for us! Each time we walk by, Kai gets to pick up a ready made instrument: the seeds rattle loudly in the pod when shaken, hence the name. We are carrying on a tradition of our species that has been taking place since there have been children. Wherever and whenever there are seed pods, people use them to make music. On a recent vacation to the Caribbean we saw brightly painted pods from the Poinciana tree that were being sold as musical souvenirs.

The Shaky Shaky Seeds are the pods of Honey Locusts (Gleditsia triacanthos) and it is when you see hundreds of these orphaned pods that you realize how out of place they are in our urban and suburban plantings. Like the Ginkgo and the London Plane (whose leaf is the logo for the NYC Parks Department), the Honey Locust is a tree from outside of our region but that was chosen by city and town planners for its hardiness and resistance to pollution. Our Honey Locusts were taken from river valleys in the middle of our continent and brought to our little village where their seeds and pods are ignored by squirrels and other wildlife. In their natural setting, the sweet Honey Locust pods would be grazed upon by cattle and horse, or prior to their arrival on this continent, by various, large and now-extinct mammals. The animals would enjoy the pulp and pass on surviving seeds in their droppings. Our local trees' pods will remain on the ground among the grasses until lawn mowers sputter to life in a few months, and then they will be chopped to pieces. Except for the few that Kai and other children will save, shake, and scatter.