Today I spent the day at the lake. Lake Freeman that is.. in Monticello, IN. I meditated in the sun next to the water. Then I spent a few hours planting shiitake mushroom plugs into some hickory stumps. But what I really enjoyed was collecting walnuts and eating them. Of course you can't just pick them up and pop them into your food hole.
I had to roll them under my shoe for a bit to get the dried exterior off. Then I collected about 20 nuts and made my way up to my dad's work bench at the cabin. There he has a mounted vice which I used to crack each nut. They don't break open gracefully. It takes several clamps of the vice to get all of the meat out of the nut. By the end of it all I had 2 small handfuls which I snacked on and added to my salad.
All in all I can't imagine what those fuzzy little nut crackers have to do to get to the same nutritious meat I had to use a vise to get to. Obviously the have long sharp teeth for it, but dang! I have a whole new respect for them!