OK… I know you have heard the saying… “When pigs fly” as in “Yeah… I’ll wash your dirty truck for you when pigs fly” or as my Big Brother would say… “You will beat me at golf when pigs fly.” Well, maybe not normal pigs, but in our yard… blue pigs ARE flying.
I have mentioned in this space at some point that thanks to our friends at Wild Bird and Nature Store and research on the Internet we have, for the past couple of years, been able to attract a pair of bluebirds to nest in a house in our backyard and raise a family.
If you have never been around bluebirds, let me tell you they are a treat. They are beautiful… there is nothing more gorgeous than a male bluebird sitting on a limb with the late afternoon sun hitting his orange chest and blue wings… it is just breathtaking!
To make things better for our family of bluebirds, we have a birdbath with a solar-powered fountain in it… which they both love bathing in… and we have a pretty little swinging feeder from which they eat mealworms. If you really want to please your bluebird friends, you MUST feed them mealworms… live, if you can find them. Yeah… it is kind of gross, but such is the cycle of life.
But, like in many living, breathing and thinking creatures… the bluebirds and I have something in common… we can get spoiled. And, boy, are our bluebirds spoiled! I started out doing a special whistle when I put the worms out for them so they would know it was feeding time. It didn’t take long before as soon as I started whistling you could see mom and dad both fly into the big tree next to the feeder and wait for me to deposit breakfast, lunch or dinner into the feeder.
But now the tables have turned. Dad, mostly, has learned that he can perch on top of the feeder shepherd’s hook and I will run fetch some worms for him. I say this because as Twila and I were working at our desks tonight at dusk, I looked out the window and there he was… looking in the window at me like he was thinking… “Hey, we have babies to feed. How about a little snack?” Now, in fairness I can’t say anything. Twila has me so spoiled all I have to say is… “How much do you love me?” and she will get me about anything from the kitchen I want. But, come on… I am totally convinced we now have flying bluebird pigs. They are both heavier than early in the year and since the eggs have already been laid… well, even bluebirds deserve political correctness so I won’t say more about their sizes!
But I don’t have to be politically correct where daddy bluebird is concerned so we’ll just say… come by our backyard and you will get to see what the headline means… blue pigs do fly!
