"Flying Pig Ranch & Thistle Farm? What the hell is that all about???

Assuming my best Walter Brennan posture and adopting a curmudgeon tone, "Pigs I tell you! Flyin' pigs! All over my feeders. Flying pigs! They're just pigs!"

The first part, 'Flying Pig Ranch', is a reference to our fowl weather friends. ( That was a pun right there, just so you know. ) When the weather turns foul the Flying Pigs begin to flock to our feeders. Yeah, I talking about birds here.

Before ClimateChange/GlobalWarming/BeingCoalStupid turned Kentucky's winter into a near subtropical rain.all.d*mned.day mess we used to have a great 'Sounder' (A group of pigs. Yeah, I had to look it up.) of gold finches, house finches, three kinds of sparrows, blue jays, downy woodpeckers, yellow belly sap suckers, brown thrashers, mocking birds, morning doves, chickadees, tit mouses, cardinals, wrens, ...panting from exertion ... and the occasional red tail hawk, who comes to feast on the other little birdies. [My best run-on sentence evah.]

We got yer feeders here although not as many as my bird-lady Mom; sorta like cat-lady, which she is too. We got suet feeders, hanging feeders, seed feeders, thistle socks, a terracotta flowerpot 'dish', a hand-thrown groddy-needs-to-be-fired-again orphaned cup from one of Ken Shenstone's Anagama firings, and a cute little suction-cuppy type thing that sticks on the window next to B's chair.

We buy our feed stock at the local Rural King. Yup, that tractor supply store out by the tail end of the old by-pass around town. They built that new place back there behind the Kroger. Then the new Express Way came through and all but cut them right off. Luckily the locals have more use for the RK than that pork barrel pavement project. When the season is really cold it is a forty pound sack of Sunflower seeds and at least 5 5-lb bags of roasted <u>unsalted</u> peanuts in the shell per month.

They do like their Pig's Buffet. The cup is nestled in the corner of a post and railing. I try to only fill it two or maybe three times a day with peanuts. Mostly it's Jays. They can be so particular; pick one up, put it down, pick up another, put it down and take the first again before fleeing the scene of the snatch-n-grrab robbery. And greedy. A Jay will take a in-the-shell peanut and then try to pick up anther. The first peanut prevents the Jay from closing its beak and getting a grip on the second. Surprising how many times they will try for the second peanut before giving up.

In the real desparate times of winter food is so scarce that almost all the Pigs like the suet cages. The usual subjects, the woodpeckers, sap suckers, and brown thrashers are regular visitors, just ride the suet cages as the spin around. The rest of the pigs posture for grazing rights below, snapping up the morsels that rain down from the sloppy eaters above. As the suet cakes are consumed I will fill the cages with peanutes. The wood peckers really enjoy both. It makes the Jay crazy, trying to wrangle whole peanuts from between the bars of the of the cages. So, I gets my revenge where I can.

Better stop ranting here and go out on the porch, "Get off my feeders you Flying Pigs! Pigs I tell ya. You're just pigs!"