Pheasantville

Happy Mother's Day to all mothers on my blogroll today.

On this day after the Kentucky Derby, I must say that the media experts put their bets in the wrong departments yesterday when they devoted nearly two thirds of their pre-Derby coverage to the trainer with five horses. My, we even had to watch him "saddle up" most of his mounts.

Not that he had an assistant doing most of the work, but that was a key part of the media story, so we watched the trainer (who had a surely cinch on a win), tighten up at least three of the five saddle cinches. One of those horses belonged to George, and George's people had been instructed not to talk to the media for fear of bad luck.

So, when the interviewer asked the Irish guy about George's horse and got just a few words of drivel followed by "I can't talk to you," I worried about that man's job if George's horse lost. Well, the horse lost pretty badly and someone's gonna get blamed. Could be curtains for that Irish guy who cursed the win by uttering those few words to a reporter.

George's horse did finish seventh, though, which was the best of the trainer's five horses, all owned by big bucks folks. And good ol' "what's its name" shocked them all by winning at 50-1 odds. The only information the media experts had fed us about that horse was that his name was the same as musician Sting's son's.

They were speechless when the win came because they hadn't done their homework about this long shot. So, they called it wrong, and George is probably mad today, while those who placed bets on Giacomo have been laughing all the way to the bank. Good for them! And, good for Giacomo! Good luck to him in the Preakness.

I mentioned yesterday that the Kentucky Derby is a rite of spring at the Love house. On that very day, another May ritual occurred. Bill brought home his baby pheasants. This will be the third year he's gone to Carter Country, talked to the "bird man" and picked out an batch of babies to bring home.

We have a pheasant roost out in the lawn south of the driveway, but these little ones are starting out in the fish tank. We have an unusually large number this year----19. In the past, we've had 10 or 11. Bill said he had a choice of purchasing half a dozen ten-day-olds or this batch of 3-day olds. He chose the larger number.

Before the week's out, the pheasants will move to a bigger cage, and in a few weeks an even bigger one until they're mature enough to go to the roost. Within three months, they'll grow into beautifully speckled females or colorful roosters. In October, we'll release them and hope some make it through the winter. Bill's overall aim is to have enough survive that the whole area around where we live becomes Pheasantville.

That will be a nice contrast to my name for the quickly developing Metalbuildingville. Let's see if the two entities can complement each other.

Have a great Sunday.