Duck Duck Duck

So here it is, a mid-February Tuesday evening. The evening is warm by February standards, the fog is coming in. The horses, dog, cats, and ducks are fed.

I have yet to put the ducks up for the night - they were exuberant in their puddle finds and new-found foraging skills, so I hated to call a halt to their fun too early. When we got these five young ducks last year, they had been "farm-raised" for a future as a main course in NYC - i.e., fed from a pan in a pen housed with many, many more "meat" ducks. Unbeknownst to me (OR THEM) when I sought out some grasshopper-eaters last summer, these five ducks did not have an inkling that they were supposed to find their own food from around our yard. I kept telling them, "You know!! Like ducks on a Junebug!!!" But they clearly did not get it. But I have noticed this week, with the warm weather and thaw, the ducks have started foraging through the mush a bit. And they are laying eggs this week, too. So, maybe they are on the road back to natural duckhood.

It won't matter if they are or if they are not, though. This week, I sent in my order for 17 new day-old Indian Runner ducklings. Due for hatching the first week of May. We seem to go through ducks at a rate that might be deemed...not right? Anyone who lives in the country knows the perils of natural predators. After our wonderful dog Bear died, the natural predators in our neighborhood seemed to have our number: our female Bouvier, Biserka, must hold a sign up for all the owls, foxes, skunks and coyotes in our neck of the woods, saying something like, "You want ducks? We gots 'em! Come right this way!" Oddly, last summer, my wonderful sixteen young Indian Runners disappeared, all of them, in one day. No feathers left behind, no nothing. Inexplicable. But I enjoyed those Runners so much that, yes, I am having another go at it. It's becoming an annual event in my yard. I have learned through the years and through the ducks, that the later in the spring I arrange for hatching and delivery, the more viable my little crew of duckling survivors. And, a quicker transplant from my bathroom and its heat lamp and stinky ducklings, to the great outdoors. And the latter is key, let me tell you.

Duck attack!