Peach pits with holes bored into them.

[DownHome]

We have remodeled a couple of bedrooms in our upstairs and at first I thought whoever built it must have ate a lot of peaches. All of the pits had holes bored into them from the outside in I think. Anyone know what would have done it? What ever it was is long gone and how did it get it into the attic of a 2 story house? No sign of any birds ever having been in the attic.

[AuntKitty]

I have seen people make jewelry out of painted peach pits strung on a wire. Pretty disgusting to me, but seemed to be a fad at craft fairs about 20 years ago. Now as to how they got in the attic, maybe you should read the ghost story thread.....

Kitty

[januaries]

How many holes in each pit?

I've heard of using peach pits to treat parasites. As I understand it, the trace amounts of arsenic poison the parasites but aren't enough to harm the person.

Don't know what that would have to do with holes, though.

Maybe it was a kid who wanted to play with his new hand drill. It was a hot summer and they'd been given a bushel of peaches by a neighbor. As the family at the peaches, the kid saved the pits. He put them in a vice to hold them in place, then practiced drilling on them. (He'd already gotten in trouble for using his drill on important things, so he wisely limited his unsuperivsed drilling experiments to pieces of garbage.)

[copperkid3]

QUOTE: "...the trace amounts of arsenic poison the parasites but aren't enough to harm the person."

The kernel inside the peach pit contains a form of cyanide.
Other fruits containing this type of cyanide in their pits are apricots,
cherries, nectarines, plums and even apple seeds.

Peach pits contain a number of chemicals called “cyanogenetic glycosides”. These are not cyanide, but when processed in the human digestive system, cyanide is one of the resulting by-products.

One of these cyanogenetic glycosides is amygdalin, which is the same chemical that was once sold as a fraudulent cancer “cure”, under the names “laetrile” and “vitamin B-17”. The only way in which this substance was ever actually shown to have prevented anyone from dying of cancer was to cause them to die first from cyanide poisoning.

If you are juicing or cooking fruit it's best to remove the seed
pockets from apples and the pits of other fruits beforehand.

The body defends itself naturally against small amounts
of cyanide but better to be safe than sorry.