Pinecone

CRACK!!! As our super-quiet afternoon was suddenly interrupted, we turned to each other and cried, "What was that!" We checked the garden area the sound came from, and finding nothing, went back to reading. However, our daughter's dog, which we were keeping for the day, had jumped up from her nap and had run behind a chair. She was taking no chances. 

CRACK!! Again, the noise startled us enough that we began to try to figure out the source.

"Could something electrical have shorted?"

"A worker with a nail gun has been shooting it carelessly!"

"A meteorite on its way through hit the ground!"  (Really far out ideas, I know)

CRACK!! The dog leaped onto my lap and stuck her head under my arm.

On our driveway, we have several potted plants, shells, and a few other collecttibles. At the last CRACK, Don realized the sound came from a huge pinecone we had picked up on Palomar Mountain a few months ago. It was sitting in the sun, and as it heated up, the piñon seeds were loosening.

 I knocked the 8" x 5" diameter cone over, and probably twenty-five piñon nuts attached to their helicopter-like wing, scattered onto the driveway. We enjoyed throwing a few up into the air to watch them twirl back to earth. After separating each nut from the fragile wing, I stored them in a plastic bag along with perhaps thirty others which had fallen out earlier. (No CRACKS heard then) 

So, in a nutshell, (no pun intended) our mystery sound was another evidence of God's creativity and care for His creatures. The stunning spiral of this "widow maker" as they are sometimes called, not only is beautiful, but productive, as it released its bounty under heat. Each seed had a propelling device to help land it somewhere fertile. Those which don't make it to the ground, in a forest setting, will feed the animals. Ours will taste great on salad!  If we can get their amazingly hard shells to  CRACK!!