Dian’s Pigs and the Vultures

We first met Dian when we had a double-wide looking for a new home. We’d just finished building our house, and as luck would have it, her daughter’s trailer had been smashed by a falling tree. She needed a place, we had one, and just like that we became neighbors and friends.

Dian is a born storyteller, with tales that begin plain as day and end with a laugh you don’t see coming. One of the best starts like a joke: “One day, a pig showed up at our house.”

They did what country folks do — tried to find the owner. And they did. But the pig wasn’t having it. It came back. And stayed. Soon there was a pen, and inside the old pump-house enclosure on their property, a new home for Piggy. Before long, Piggy had piglets.

And then came the birds.

Not just any birds — turkey vultures. Big, black-winged, red-headed undertakers of the countryside. For reasons only they could explain, they decided that Dian’s pump house, right next to the pig pen, was prime real estate. They moved in like uninvited cousins at a family reunion. The pigs had company.

According to Dian, there were times when it looked like an invasion — vultures lining the roof, vultures roosting in the pump house rafters, vultures circling overhead like feathered guardians of the pigs. She swears they had the best deal around: food scraps, water, friends, and a safe place to roost.

Of course, there were… side effects. Piles of white streaks everywhere, the kind of smell that hangs in the air, and one poor lawnmower seat chewed down to the stuffing. But if you ask Dian, the birds were just doing what birds do.

And she wasn’t wrong — every drive down the country road proves it. Deer, armadillos, squirrels, snakes — the roadkill buffet doesn’t last long with Dian’s vultures on patrol.

So now, whenever we see a cluster of those big dark birds doing cleanup duty on Knight Road, we can’t help but say: “There go Dian’s birds.”

Like most of her stories, it’s equal parts truth, legend, and laughter. And like Dian herself — it’s unforgettable.