"Moisture and sheer volume caused the microwave signal to finally give out."
This video was spread across the internet a few years ago, but I just want to make one thing clear: it wasn't a squirrel that did such a thing. It was a bird.
Initial reports stated that it was a four-legged fuzzy critter that collected all of the nuts, but according to a senior scientist with the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, an acorn woodpecker. Take a look at the rainfall of nuts.
“They’re pretty famous for finding places to hide acorns,” says Walter Koenig.
He's been studying the bird for years on end. He also says that he once saw a traffic signal jammed so full of acorns that it was unreadable.
Here's an Acorn Woodpecker History Lesson
The acorn woodpecker stores its nuts one at a time, digging a small hole in a tree, and then pushing in a solitary acorn for safekeeping. They do this so that the acorns are kept dry and sort of protected from thieving squirrels.
The birds have been known to collect as many as 50,000 individual acorns in a single redwood tree.
Every now and again, they’ll stash a batch of acorns inside a dead tree or even a hollow wall (or perhaps an antenna). However, keeping their acorns in a group can give them an upper hand on the risk of spoilage from moisture or mold.
So, let's get back to this antenna situation.
AT&T in California, who are the owners of the transmitting equipment in the video, said that the incident happened back in 2009. The company's technicians shot the video and it was apparently the only time an acorn woodpecker has disrupted the company's transmitting equipment. That's according to AT&T spokesperson, Jim Greer.
"Moisture and sheer volume caused the microwave signal to finally give out," said Greer. "As soon as the acorns were released, the signal came right back on."
Greer also estimated that the woodpeckers were filling the antenna for about five years. The original cover was replaced with a stronger fiberglass model to avoid any future occurrences.
By Matthew Sterner.
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