walnuts

The walnut tree beside our house is dropping its summer's work onto the roof and anything else unlucky enough to be located underneath it. I'm guessing the top branches of the tree are some 30 feet high. The small, compact nuts unhook themselves from their branches and go plummeting downwards, picking up velocity as they go. The ones that hit the roof do so with a loud THWACK and then rumble their way down the slope until rolling off the edge. This happens every few minutes; it sometimes sounds like gunshots. Loudest of all is when the walnuts hit the skylight directly over the couch. My cats and I have been jumping out of our skin for the past week. When I sit out on the back deck I imagine I should be wearing a helmet. One well aimed walnut to the head could do the trick. People have died from less.