The Duckling Chronicles

When we first moved to this our rural ménage, it seemed like it was the Year of the Grasshopper. They were everywhere. It was awful. Grasshoppers of Biblical proportions. Eating everything in sight, as long as it was green. Grasshopper tobacco, grasshopper poop, grasshoppers big and grasshoppers tiny. It was pretty awful.

The next spring, we got ducks. And nature took its course, and the food chain fell into place. Plus - the bonus that didn't even occur to me: eggs! We got eggs every morning! How fun is that, I ask you? The duckling project was win-win!

Unfortunately, the food chain just kept adding link-after-link, and all sorts of interesting predators have made their way into our yard and pasture to cull our duck collection. Coyotes, a fox or two or more, snakes, hawks, a skunk, a domesticated (presumably) Bloodhound who merely wanted to play, and who set the limp bodies (pl.) aside once the wings quit flapping.

Late this winter I ordered more day-old ducklings to replace our fallen fowl, to be delivered the first week of May. I chose May, anticipating warm weather. This was key to my plan. Day-old ducklings are simply one of the cutest things on God's green earth. Holding one is like holding meringue: all fluff. This adorableness lasts, oh, say two weeks, and by then the ducklings have developed a pretty strong routine of eating and drinking and the intake and output of said duckling activity really starts to reek. Particularly when one must keep their little duckling habitat ~80-90º those first couple of weeks.

I don't have a crystal ball and I did not foresee that this year's spring temps would be in the frost-warning zone that early morning when the postman called from the next town over's post office to tell me my ducklings were in, and could I pick them up before 7:30 am?

I did pick them up before the post office officially opened for business (what you do is walk through the front foor of the PO, knock on a locked door, call out "Yoo-hoo!" and someone opens the top half of the dutch door, and hands you a little box of ducks - like visiting a speakeasy in the 20s, I guess.) Sadly, 3 of the baby ducks were Dead On Arrival, and another died soon after I took them home. Murray McMurray Hatchery is good for the replacement of said birds, and they told me they would send 4 more day-old ducklings two weeks later.

Well, here it is, three weeks later and the 3-week old ducklings graduated out into the 75º duckhouse this weekend. We have four 1-week-old ducklings living the life in our guestroom bathroom. We have ONE mature (i.e., at least a year old) duck left from last year's arrivials.

In fact, it was Beauregard the Bloodhound that offed the last few ducks in our yard. As I said, he did not kill them right off, and did not eat them; merely played too roughly, and left them for us to gather up and take into the duckhouse to wait hopefully for their recovery. The 2nd to the last duck walked into Beau's dog yard, and that was that. He survived the night in the duckhouse, and died the next day. We were down to one duck. This one duck got pretty lonely, waddling around the yard by herself, quacking at humans, cats, and finally, quacking at the big red dog behind the 5' fence. And then she began walking over to the big red dog behind the 5' fence. One afternoon, that Spouse o' Mine came in and asked if I had seen the duck (we don't name our ducks), as he had observed a lot of feathers out in Beau's side of the yard. He went back out, and the poor duck was lying motionless in Beau's dog yard. He picked up the duck and put her in the duckhouse for the night...same drill as many before that duck. We think she walked over just close enough for Beau to stick his head through the fence panel and put her whole body in his mouth...

Well! The next morning, she was sore, but still alive and waddling. And we named our first duck: (what else?) Lucky Duck. A couple of days later I transferred the ducklings to the duckhouse, separating them from her by means of chicken wire. Big duck was not interested in leaving the saftey of the duckhouse, and there she sat, studying the ducklings all weekend. Today was the big day: time to let the ducklings out on their own. What would big duck do? Peck them? Trample them? No. She mothered them. All is well.

(You can't see them well,
but there are two goldfinches eating at the feeder in this photo.)

And so...four to go...

Who is that,
with his head sticking out of the horse tank,
in the upper-left hand corner of this photo?