My daughter has inherited my acorn collecting addiction. Every day, she goes outside and collects all the acorns off the back hill. She has been filling her kitchen pots and pans with them pretending to make acorn pies and soups and casseroles. i collect acorns every year to decorate my nature table, for art projects and just sitting around in baskets or bowls. i LOVE acorns. i usually leave them outside a couple of days to dry out. Miss Sage however, didn't....she brought them all right inside. i didn't really think about it....until...
They started hatching!! Almost all of our acorns were infected with acorn maggots. Yuck!! This isn't the first time i've come across acorn maggots. i've occasionally had one or two hatch out, which is why i always leave them outside a few days before bringing them in. i've never seen so many freaking maggots!! i think ALL of the acorns were infected, we had hundreds of them. Yuck!
So how does the maggot get in there?? This really cool video from national geographic shows the whole process! As gross as the maggots were, the kids were fascinated to learn all about the Acorn weevil maggots and how they got in there. :)
Oh gosh! I remember the same thing happened to me when I was a little girl, except that I brought in pine cones instead of acorns! I can still remember being shocked when I noticed all the movement coming from that little basket.
ReplyDeleteMemories that will last forever :)
Really interesting. I'll show my son. He'll love that bit about the maggots. They are beautiful, big acorns!
ReplyDeleteI remeber when I was a little boy same thing happened to me I was collecting them and put them in a continer with my army men, lol my mom opened the container up and found bunch of maggots living in the container lol, she was quick to tossing the container in the garbage and disposing of it.
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