What’s the weirdest thing you’ve found in your wood when split?

Split a lot of oak (fresh and standing dead) and have seen some strange critters in the wood.
Any really weird stuff out there?

giant white larvae grubs of some kind i n some downed cherry i cut last year

found a railroad spike once thinking it was used as a ladder to a tree stand.
It was a close call as it was only about an inch from the end.

WOW that would have done a number on your chain.....
I've got some really stinky red oak that fell in a windstorm a year ago. It has these huge yellow alien larvae things. I'm sure some beetle larvae of some sort. The wood smells like a cat urine.. I wonder if that's why?

not bugs, but i always know when i've got to some shot, because the sparks start flying when i'm cutting it.

Yes Sir, same here in a semi rotten Red Oak. Picked up a little over a dozen of them.

FYI they don't float.....sink straight to the bottom of the lake.

Yesterday I was splitting some walnut for my fil. The bark shot off and inside was three lizards. The next one had a Prairie Ring-Necked Snake. It was a chilly 50 degs and he was coiled up about he size of my palm. He did not hardly move. The lizards warmed up a little in my hand and they went crazy.

A old screwdriver, mostly rotted away, and a lot of lead shot from someone probably hanging a target on a tree. other than that basic bugs like carpenter ants and wood wasps. And rocks, but those are not all that strange if you think about it.

a lorax

In many trees I find the big white grubs. Pretty common here. Also, nails, wires, a rock, an ax head, and a bullet.

the only interesting stuff i have found is bugs. we were splitting some big cherry last year and this particular log the ends looked solid, but was hollow inside, housing about a million ants. that day i happened to be wearing pants that had holes in the knees. guess where the ants went...

Found a plow point once! Evidently someone had laid it in a crotch of a tree when the tree was young. Amazing what these trees can and will do.

Found a trap grown into a maple crotch once. Figured a coon got caught by the toe and dragged dragged it up there.

dog chain

Back when I was about 20 yrs old I worked for an outfit up in Northern Vancouver island where we would go into the bush and cut cedar shake blocks from old growth cedar trees. The cedar tree were mostly ones that had fallen over and were often covered with moss and branches, which had to be cleared away first, and often portions of the tree were rotten from lying on the ground for years, but there was still enough good wood to be worth digging into. I'm talking trees that were often 6-8 ft in diameter and cedar that doesn't easily rot even when sitting on the ground getting rained on day after day for years.
Anyway, when we would get into these trees we would often find nests of hundreds of salamanders that would come swarming out as we cut the wood open, it was quite a sight.
We use to pull 5-10 cord out of trees that were way off the road and almost hidden by undergrowth.. Because the trees were often so far off the road the only economical way to get the blocks down to the road so you could load them in the truck was by helicopter.

Nails & barbed wire.

Found a spike in a beechtree that was blown down in a wind storm at my father-in-laws. The boys had put in some wood steps YEARS ago. I cut it in half-------------------long ways. Thew the chain away. surprizing how fast it cut thru but it stopped cutting right after. it was a worn chain but wasn't anything left to file.
leaddog

Last summer I had just felled and was bucking up a dead elm. Got to a crotch where the main trunk branched into two (hollow spot)
and cut into a bats nest. Didn't cut into any but they did leave in a hurry.

Close friend from work had some tree work done and the crew accidently sawed through a scared family of racoons... It was pretty messy from what I hear. YUCK!

Snake.

I once dropped a hickory tree, as it fell a squirrel shot out of the butt. Come to find out the tree was hollow.

Yup, coon in a hollow tree. My friend who was felling it was looking at his legs trying to figure out where the blood was coming from.

Most of the lizards & such scatter when I pick the wood up. I've found a few drywall screws. Also found a splitting wedge, but it was left in from someone else's attempt to split a nasty piece of pine (I did split that one, but I have a few pieces from that batch waitin' for the next time I rent a splitter).

Peace,
- Sequoia

Spikes and nails.

Matt

An old rusted horseshoe.