When it is extra hot (as now!) and extra dry (as now!), the place to be is the Brownspur Swimming Hole, which holds over 100,000 gallons of water, which comes out of the well at 68 degrees.

There’s a shady end and a sunny end, so you can pick and choose where to swim or float, but it’s all more comfortable than the surrounding dry land and suffocating humidity of the Mississippi Delta.

It’s also the only available watering hole for our feathered friends, excusing the quickly-soaked-in dregs from a couple of center pivots a half-mile away, so we get literally tons of visitors throughout the day who fly in for a drink and/or a cooling soak. Betsy and I were floating around one afternoon, not moving much as birds dropped by to refresh themselves: doves, blackbirds, rain crows, jaybirds, mockers, wrens, sparrows, thrashers, two kinds of orioles – you name it.

They’d alight on the bank, stroll down to drink their fill, then wade out deep enough to splash around in the water. We were enjoying the show, until my Bride wondered out loud, “You know, we’ve always blamed evaporation for our water losses here!”

It’s true, of course, that we’ve always had to keep the well valve cracked during a hot dry summer, or else we lose about a foot of water every few days. That also keeps cooler water flowing in. But suddenly I realized that Betsy was onto something: “How much water do these tons of birds carry off?” she asked.

Fortunately, we have a family expert on such things: my nephew Will, who is a Certified Engine-Ear with MS DOT (the road folks). Years ago, he called the house in a great state of excitement: “Uncle Bob, there are tons of doves in our field here by the house! Get Adam and Cuz and the Jakes, and let’s have a hunt!”

An hour later, we had seen three doves, none close enough to shoot at. We began an exercise in mathematics for the benefit of our young host, who was still sitting across the field, so we had to figure loud, to include him. We figured that doves, unplucked and on the hoof, so to speak, ran about three to the pound – this was an estimate, since we had neither scales nor three doves, you must understand.

This meant that doves would therefore run about 6,000 to the ton, and since our host had proclaimed he had “Tons” plural, we figured that a minimum of 12,000 doves were due to come to that field that afternoon.

In order to help him confirm his estimate, we began to count off and subtract to wile away the long evening.  “There’s one, Will – only 11,987 more to go!”  “Watch, Adam, here comes Number 19 – only 11,981 to go, Will!”  

Understand that all this helpful figuring was at the decibel level of a shout, in order that our young host could hear, for he steadfastly refused to join us at the water cooler, where most of us spent the entire afternoon, doing mathematical exercises.

By dusk, we were still 11,876 doves shy of the quota, but Cuz pointed out in all fairness that any doves over the first ton might be classed as plural, so we may not have been but 5,877 doves shy of the declared quota for the field.

Whatever, I had literally at my fingertips the mathematical statistics to arrive at a total for my Bride’s observation.

“Well, 12,000 birds (Tons plural) obviously drink several ounces a day: let’s say, two apiece, or nearly 25,000 ounces, which figures out to about 200 gallons a day that two tons of birds – bullbat to titmouse averaged in – drink out of our Swimming Hole.  

“But we’ve floated here to watch them bathe and walk out with a lot more than that, haven’t we? Let’s see, it takes 40 gallons of hot water to bathe a human – all that’s in the hot water heater. That’s about five gallons to bathe an average pound of human, and we’re all picked and plucked, so to speak.

“That means it probably takes at least 400 gallons of water to bathe a ton of our feathered friends each day, so that’s 800 gallons for Tons plural.

“Shoot a mile, Betsy!

“Our birds are taking a thousand gallons of water a day out of our Swimming Hole! Reckon there’s a federal grant for wildlife water holes?”

So, if you see a Swimming Hole flying by one day, well, now you know.