I live on an old street... Turn of the previous century at least... That means there are some old houses, and some really old trees in the area... My neighbors have a giant oak along the curb... I mean a GIANT, HUGE OAK!!! If just one of the main branches snapped and fell, I wouldn't have a house left to repair, I'd be starting from scratch... (as such I keep a very close eye on the health of said tree)
This year, the weather produced the ideal conditions apparently for the production of acorns from said oak... This leads to a number of issues, some of which I knew were coming, others, I hadn't considered before...
So these things start dropping... Either its the wind, or a group of twisted squirrels shaking them down... It doesn't matter which really, they're dropping... So a couple things happen.
a) Those bloody squirrels come, pick them up, and bury them all over the place, meaning I will have to start pulling up miniature oak trees from my gardens again next year.
b) They fall on my driveway and the squirrels ignore them.
c) They fall on the house
A needs no explanation... That's just nature planting new trees, and while those little saplings are a pain in the ass to pull unless you get them early, they do come up...
B leads to a couple things... Some of the acorns get driven over, and turned in to acorn butter... Now I have a tight driveway, that slops down toward my garage... Imagine if you will trying to navigate on a smooth surface, with a heavy vehicle, covered in something similar to peanut butter... This is disgusting, and I will have to power wash the driveway after most of the acorns are down... The other thing that happens is, the acorns land off to the side, and build up in numbers, waiting to attack my drainage system... Then when we get a rain, they all float down the driveway to the drain I had to install, and clog it, producing something of a miniature New Orleans effect... The water builds up, until it overtops the little stone walls around my garden, then it washes my top soil further down in the yard... Lovely...
C however is the worst of all... As I said, the tree is big, and therefor, tall... The acorns must be going at a pretty good clip just before they hit... I mention this because I have an aluminum awning/walk cover in the front of my place... Personally, I'm not fond of it, but its there, and I like the covered walk... (I'll replace it with a wood version some day... just not right now...) The thing is, when those acorns hit that sheet aluminum roof, it sounds like a shot... Not a big booming shotgun or anything, but something more than the pop of a handgun... We're in the .30 calibre range I think... So what I get (usually in the middle of the night, or early in the morning for some reason) sounds like a slow speed rifle battle... Now, I got used to hearing the occasional gunshot at night when I lived across the river in a ghetto, but that was never ATTACHED TO MY HOUSE... This has been going of for a few weeks on and off as they fall... Not frequently enough that I simply get used to it though... I jump out of bed every time... I can't wait until those things are finally down... Ugh!