Nick Castro has seen plenty of strange things in his 20-plus years running Nick’s Extreme Pest Control in California. But nothing could have prepared him for what came tumbling out of the walls of one customer’s home.
It all started with a woodpecker. The bird had been drilling holes into the house’s siding — not just for fun, but for storage. Like a tiny feathered hoarder, the woodpecker was stashing acorns inside the walls.
At first, Castro assumed he’d find a small cache when he cut into the drywall. Maybe a bucketful at most. But as soon as he opened the wall, the acorns started pouring out.
And pouring. And pouring.
“They just kept coming and coming, nonstop,” Castro told The Dodo. “We thought they were only about a quarter of the way up the wall. Turns out, they went all the way up to the attic.”
What started as a trickle turned into an avalanche.
By the time Castro was finished cutting open sections of the house, around 700 pounds of acorns had spilled out — enough to fill eight giant trash bags.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said.
The woodpecker, clearly, had been very busy.
Luckily, Castro’s business prides itself on handling wildlife humanely. No harm came to the bird. Once the acorns were cleared out, the holes in the siding were patched, and new vinyl siding was added to discourage future storage runs.
In the end, the woodpecker’s hard work wasn’t completely wasted — it left behind one of the wildest stories Castro has ever told.
