I was talking to a friend recently who lives in the deep south about the four seasons and how summer time is here in the Kentucky area. My friend said his state only has two seasons. Hot and hotter.

I told him that in Kentucky we only have two seasons as well; colder than a polar bear’s backside and hotter than six shades of hell.

I admit that summer has never been my favorite season. I stay locked inside my air-conditioned home until the sun goes down and then I stick my head out the door to see if it’s safe to come out yet. One of our favorite activities to do in the summer is to sit on the patio and watch the birds feed on the multitude of feeders we have set out for them.

Of all the many wonderful traits my wife has, one of them is that she never does anything half way. It’s full in or nothing.

With that in mind, we have a virtual smorgasbord of different kinds of bird seed in order to draw in every type of bird around so we can enjoy its beauty. Yes, the birds in my neighborhood have certainly hit the jackpot. They must feel like I do when I go to the all-you-can-eat buffet. So much good food and so little time.

The solution of course is to stuff all the food you can possibly hold into your mouth so that I leave thinking I got the better of them.

Every bird feeder guru around knows that the number one enemy is squirrels. It seems that no matter what trick I use to try and keep them out of my bird feeder, they find a way around it and feast on the seed.

It’s not like I want to starve the squirrels. Everybody has to eat. We put the extra bird feed in plastic containers in the garage for safe keeping. Imagine our surprise when a huge hole was gnawed through the plastic.

I know when I’m licked. We started to provide fresh corn in a separate feeder and away from the birds so the squirrels would have their own buffet.

We placed the remaining corn in a hard shell cooler. After a good rain had fallen, we discovered that the cooler leaked a little. My wife said the corn got wet and was starting to sprout.

Not wanting to waste it, we fed it to the squirrels anyway. A day later, my wife told me that there were a few squirrels in the yard that were sick. They were unable to stand up and just kept rolling around on the ground.

I went to the corn cooler to see what they had been fed and the answer hit my nose like a sledgehammer. The corn had not only started to sprout but it also started to ferment.

I told my wife that whether she realized it or not, she had just passed the first stage of making moonshine.

The squirrels weren’t sick, they were drunk off their little furry tails. I went to the yard and I swear I heard one squirrel singing Hank Williams Jr. songs and another was telling the other squirrels, “I love you man.”

We learned a valuable lesson that day. By complete accident we turned our yard squirrels into partying college students overnight.

I have to go now. I going to pass out aspirin to a bunch of hungover squirrels.