My neighbor Aileen’s pig, Ollie, that is. You remember meeting him last month, right? He’s so darned cute! Her little granddaughter made this sign for Ollie’s summer house. See the little curled-up pig tail on the “O”? Trouble is, Ollie doesn’t have your normal curled-up pig tail—his is straight as can be and it wags all the time like a dog’s.

I took Rick over to meet him two weeks ago so he’d stop making jokes about getting both eggs & bacon from our neighbors. He understands now how special Ollie is.

He comes running when Aileen calls him, grunting and making little piggy oinking noises the whole way. Just don’t try to pick him up. He squeals, well, like a pig!

Mary-Anne the sheep shares Ollie’s summer home and doesn’t understand why all the fuss over a stupid pig! Look at me, she says, at least you get wool from me! What does he do to deserve all this attention?

Aileen’s chickens lay wonderful eggs and I am totally spoiled getting fresh eggs when she has them. She recently “weeded” out the old chickens and the roosters so one chicken house is empty now. Ollie will move in there for the winter so he can have a heat lamp. I’m thinking Mary-Anne is saying “good-riddance to that hammy pig!” (multiple puns intended)

Although we had roosters right next door we hardly ever heard them. Not so with our neighbors two houses down from us. They have chickens too. And very noisy roosters. It starts at 4:00 a.m. and goes until 6:00 a.m. Right now we still have the bedroom window open some so there’s no avoiding him. It’s not your normal cock-a-doodle-do. If it was it might not be so bad. But this rooster sounds like it either has a sore throat or something stuck in it. Every few minutes it lets out a croaky rendition of the old cock-a-doodle-do. It’s not pleasant at that hour of the morning and it makes me cranky. I keep threatening to go down there and make coq au vin out of him.