Naturalists in Arlington County in Northern Virginia realized one by one that there were no acorns or hickory nuts this year.  Field botanist Rod Simmons went for a 2.5 mile hike in early fall and found not a one.  Not on the ground, not on the trees.  None.  He and others started calling around.  No acorns in any of the surrounding counties, none at Arlington National Cemetery.  Another naturalist, Greg Zell, got on the Internet.  Chat groups were reporting no acorns from any of the oaks anywhere.  Not in the Midwest, not in New York, not in New England, not in Nova Scotia.  

But, boy, there were hungry squirrels.  The Washington Post, which reported on the naturalists' find, wrote, "Rachel Tolman, a naturalist at Long Branch, smeared a big glop of peanut butter on one of the nature center's trees. She grabbed handfuls of store-bought hazelnuts and placed them atop boxes to attract the tiny, nocturnal flying squirrels that tend to mass in the oaks every winter. Within seconds, the squirrels dive-bombed in from nearby trees, legs outstretched like fist-size silvery-gray sky divers."