Strange noises on the roof

Last weekend, we heard a strange skittering on the roof, sort of like a million tiny claws tap dancing.  "Must be a critter up there," said Chad.  I was busy, so didn't think much of it.

Monday rolls around.  I'm doing the bills after a windy morning bike ride.   "Skitter skitter skitter skitter...."  45 minutes of annoyance.  I finally went up on the roof to investigate.

No critter.  Fine -- the dumb squirrel or whatever must have jumped off.  I cleaned out the drain grates while I was up there.

Back inside, ten minutes later.  "Skitter, skitter, skitter, skitter!"  Or is it "pop, crackle, pop, pop"?  Now my mind is interpreting the sound as something horrible happening to the foam roof.  We had had some work done on the interface between the edge of the house and the patio cover to fix a leak the previous week, and now all I could imagine in the face of this weird sound was the adhesive unsticking and pulling bits of foam roof off.

Back up to investigate.  No horrible self-decomposition of roof occurring.  No critter.  No apparent weird noises any more.   Hmmm.   In the face of nothing to react to, I headed back inside to eat lunch.

"Skitter, skitter, skitter, pop, pop, skitter, pop, skitter, pop, pop, pop....."   Argh.  I finally took the ipad up on the roof to sit and work there to see if the sound would come back if I waited long enough.  Besides, there was nice warm sun to bask in up there.

Warm until the wind came up, that is.   "Whoosh!"  "Skitter skitter skitter pop pop!"

Where is it coming from????

Then I really looked around and saw that the roof was covered with small bits of plant matter.  These tiny 1/4-inch diameter fruits were rolling around every time a gust of wind came up, making surprisingly loud skittering and bouncing noises as they blew across the foam roof.

Hmmmm....never seen these before.  Never noticed the noise in previous years.  No new big trees in the neighbors' yards.  Where are they coming from?

I looked up one more time and saw this:

See the clump of fruits hanging down from the neighbor's palm tree?  Apparently it decided to fruit for the first time in the eight years that we have lived here.  Mystery solved!

Ok, mystery solved, and I don't have to hunt down any rabid varmints or engage in roof repairs, but there really isn't anything to be done about the fact that the noise of dates raining down and bouncing across the roof is DRIVING ME CRAZY!!!!!!