Thursday, December 11, 2008

It's a Matter of Semantics

It's a matter of semantics.

I was out of cracked corn. Did I tell you I have birds in my yard? I have all different kinds of birds in my yard. I don't even know what half of them are. Well, I know the colorful ones, the unusual ones and the exotic ones. But there are so many warblers which don't even come to the feeders and then there are the sparrows. When I was little I used to feed the sparrows much to the chagrin of the neighbors who thought only the colorful songbirds were worth feeding. My grandmother always said the sparrows had to eat, too. So they always got the breadcrumbs and they peeped their thank-yous.
Now that I have at least 7 bird feeders out at any given time I find out that there are all different types of sparrows and they are hard to tell apart. They say a lot more than peep.

Anyway, I was out of cracked corn which my husband usually picks up but he has been too busy. Right now we are also feeding the ducks. We live on the edge of a lake. Well, we like to call it a lake but we are actually on the edge of what looks like a mysterious Louisiana swamp or bayou. There are actually are two bayous that feed into the north side of the lake up here – a part of the lake called Mallard Bay. There are all sorts of exotic birds that come into our yard. I soon discovered that one feeder was not enough. In the summer I have a lot of hummingbird feeders and oriole feeders around but in the winter I worry about them freezing and since there aren't many hummers around during the winter I change them out of for tube type feeders.

I went to the feed store to ask for cracked corn. How hard can that be. The man behind the counter said he wasn't sure they sold cracked corn. Hmmm – this is where my husband gets it. The lady behind the counter said “she wants chops.” I do? So I paid for 200 lbs of chops. I went around back to have it loaded into my car. I told the fellow back there that I wanted cracked corn. He didn't seem to know what that was. I explained to 2 or 3 of the fellows back there that I wanted chopped up corn for feeding ducks. One of the said we have steel cut corn. Ok, that sounded like the right thing. Another of the fellows said she wants chops. I told him I paid for chops so I guess that is what I wanted. They loaded 200 lbs of chops into the car and I left hoping I didn't have 200 lbs of ground corn meal because that would make a big mess and would the birds eat it anyway? I got home and started to unload the 4 bags and what do I see on the tag at the bottom of the bag? Yep – cracked corn. Agggh!!!

Guess I'll scoop up a couple of gallons of it and go put it down by my dock – oops, I mean pier. That's what they call it in the south.