When Janeece Flint began the process of remodeling her recently purchased Kagel Canyon home, she could never have imagined the bizarre discovery workers would stumble upon during construction.
Earlier this week, roofers were starting a project on the two-story house when one of them pulled back the old shingles on the structure. Suddenly, a massive amount of apparent nuts came pouring out, according to the homeowner.
That was only the beginning, she said.
“We poked a little hole in there and we saw seeds, and we poked a little further and more seeds came out,” Flint told KTLA in an interview on the property Friday.
As workers systematically pulled the shingles off the house – which is more than a century old – more and more emerged, sometimes even dozens at a time, video showed.
It wasn’t immediately clear if they were nuts or perhaps acorns, which they also closely resemble.
Bewildered by the puzzling find, Flint started looking into the issue; after research, she believes a woodpecker, or perhaps many woodpeckers over the years, are responsible for hiding the booty within the walls.
“They took advantage of basically what was provided,” said Israel Hersh, the project manager. “It was the best storage ever.”
Flint, a teacher, moved into the house from Northridge about two weeks ago. She put in an offer for her dream home back in December, on the same day the Creek Fire broke out in an adjacent area of Kagel Canyon.
“I was like, ‘You know, I’m not going to be deterred and the house has been here for 100 years, it hasn’t burned up yet. It’s going to be OK’,” she said.
The blaze charred over 15,000 acres and destroyed more than 120 buildings before it was fully contained about two weeks later, though what would become her residence was unscathed in the large inferno.
Then, another issue.
“The day we closed, the flood came,” Flint recalled, laughing at her luck.
A property inspection conducted before she moved in didn’t indicate anything out of the ordinary, she said. Certainly, there were no signs anything tucked away within the old structure, which began as a cabin and has undergone a series of additions and renovations over the decades.
Flint is now trying to figure out how to deal with the problem, investigating possible woodpecker deterrents — everything from a fake hole with a fake bird, to playing some “birds of prey” music.
Still, she is trying to maintain a positive outlook on the whole thing.
“It’s Mother Nature claiming back her own. But you know what? … It’s a great way to not take life so seriously,” Flint said.
