16 February 2014

Snow Day & Emergency Bird Rations

We've had a snowstorm.  I'm sure you've heard.  It was so bad, even Wal-Mart closed.  For two whole days. 

As I get older, I realize that more and more I feel that there is no use whatsoever for snow that has already fallen.  If it is currently snowing, I'll happily sit in a chair by the window and simply watch all day long, and of course, it's all the prettier as it falls if there's a big pile of snow covering the ground for it to fall on.  But after it stops?  No.  Just no.

Anyway, another factor in the snowfall was that my willow tree was practically taking flight from all the birds resting in it.  And on the ground around it.  And on the feeder by the shed.  We ran out of seed the afternoon of the third day, which, obviously, was the worst day of the storm.  So we pulled out emergency rations: pork rinds and bacon fat.
Traditionally, stale bread crumbs are what you feed to birds, but they aren't really that great, and they can actually cause harm because they don't pack all that much energy and can expand when wet and rupture the small stomachs of birds.  Pork rinds don't shrink when stale, and don't expand when wet, they just dissolve, crumpled up into the makeshift suet of bacon fat, they at least saw us through the afternoon... until the wind blew them out of the feeder tray onto the ground, where Cutty insisted that they were his.  Here's Cutty.  He loves snow.  Silly muffin.  I'll never understand it; he hates rain and rainwater.  He'll slip his collar sooner than walk through a puddle, and yet he'll prance like a drunken penguin through a snow bank.







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