But that is not all.
When the woodpeckers were through filling the squirrel’s storeroom with nuts, did they stop?
No, indeed! One woodpecker who was older than the others got up on the topmost branch of the tree and said:
“Dear brothers, do you realize now how foolish we have been all our lives?
“In the summer we feed on bugs and beetles and ants and seeds.
“Then in the winter, because we know no better, some of us go South. Some of us go hungry, and some of us die, because we cannot find enough to eat.
“Why cannot we, too, store up nuts and have food for the winter as the squirrels do?”
“The very thing!” cried the other woodpeckers.
So they all began gathering acorns and beechnuts and storing them in the bark of the trees.
Some of the nuts they would drop beneath the bark of the tree. And some they would drive with their strong bills into cracks and holes which they found here and there.