A Hole Lot of Trouble!

By Jill Henderson

Last week I was in the shop working on a project when I realized that for the entire hour that I had been there, I had been hearing the steady, drumming rhythm of a woodpecker pounding a nearby tree. I stepped out of the shop to look for the source of the sound, hoping to find out which species of woodpecker it was. I scanned the trunks of nearby trees without luck. Finally, I walked around the side of the well house to get a better look at the lower portion of the trees when a small woodpecker shot out in front of me and landed in a low-hanging branch ten feet away. I turned to look at the side of the well house and immediately saw a tidy hole in the wood siding just below the eave.

A quick inspection of the exterior and interior of the well house revealed the woodpecker had managed to make a clean 2” hole through the wood siding, but left the thin sheet of foam insulation lining the inside wall intact. This baffled me, but I couldn’t think about the why – all I could think about was that I was going to have to fix the hole and then, I would more than likely have to battle a persistent and stubborn bird who had no idea why I didn’t want it to make holes in my “tree”. I knew the latter would be the biggest challenge, for the culprit still sat in the nearby tree chastising me for interrupting his business. I turned my full attention on the vociferous bird.

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Jill Henderson is an artist, author and naturalist with a passion for wild edible and medicinal plants, organic gardening, seed saving and sustainable agriculture. She currently authors and edits the blog Show Me Oz: The Very Best of the Ozarks (http://showmeoz.wordpress.com), which focuses on building community around sustainable ideals relevant to the people of the Ozarks region and beyond.