We have spent the summer having to travel back and forth a lot to St. Louis. In fact, because of all this travel, we decided not to raise hogs after our last group went to the processor back in May. Even though we are gearing up for a new group of pigs that will be raised over the winter (hopefully the deer leave them some acorns), that anticipation has not relieved us of feeling like something is missing.

The path taken over and over this summer to St. Louis goes right by an ornamental concrete business. The last time we went was Tiffany’s birthday, and she wanted to stop… so we did. Frankly, I had been wanting a bird bath for quite a long time, but had not been anywhere that had one I liked. It took me five minutes to find the items I thought we should buy. As you can see by the picture, the pièce de résistance was the pig I found at the back of the lot, which I carried towards the front and proudly placed in the bird bath. Nonetheless, we walked around for a half hour before the birthday girl was satisfied with our choices.

Arnold the pig is now a permanent addition to our home, as shown in the picture, assuming no animal knocks it over. Unfortunately, he is fairly porous, and has absorbed quite a bit of water. I have concerns about him freezing and cracking. However, we have a plan to fix that, which Tiffany is going to enact soon.

The main thing Tiffany wanted, though, was a porch goose. I thought it was a cool idea. Mind you, my naive brain thought we were just getting a concrete statue of a goose. We had just lost two of our beautiful geese, and it almost seemed like we were getting a friend for our lone remaining goose. Side note: she doesn’t care. She is fine hanging out with the ducks. Back to me being naive – on the way home, I find out that people dress up their porch geese. I had no idea this was a thing. For the next two hours I was shown many pictures of geese wearing costumes. Admittedly, some of them were very funny.

I put my huge foot down on the idea of putting clothes on our goose. I figure that will buy me about six weeks before she does it anyway…