A Year in the Forest

I haven’t looked at the PawPaw patch for a couple of days and took the time to do that while I was down there today.  I guess I missed them being ripe, they are all gone now.  I looked around on the ground and didn’t even find any rotten ones.  The woodland creatures are very efficient here.  It was only two days ago, I last checked.  I would think that food would be pretty abundant right now, with PawPaws coming ripe and the nut trees dropping their nuts.  The old timers in this area say they think we are going to have an unusually cold winter (something about the lack of sun spots).  The PawPaws have disappeared, the edible mushrooms have all been eaten, and the nuts seem to disappear as soon as they fall.  Maybe the animals also anticipate a bad winter and are stocking up.