May 26, 2022

Four Little Ducks Went Out to Play

...over the hills and far away. Mother Duck said, "Quack! Quack! Quack!" but only three little ducks came back..."

Does anyone remember that children's song? It randomly pops into my head sometimes, even though I have no idea where I first heard it when I was a kid. Anyway...

Yesterday, I was talking to my mom on the phone when suddenly I heard her yelling for my dad. There was a lot of shuffling with the phone and then she said, "Katie, there are little baby ducks in our garage! They just followed me in here. I'll call you back."

I had no idea what was going on, but she called me back later that afternoon and said that she was doing yard work and when she walked into the garage, four little ducklings came around the corner of the house and followed her into the garage! She told my dad to come see. Then he started looking for the mom and/or a nest for them.

They aren't super young--from what I saw online, I would guess maybe 4-5 weeks--but they can't fly yet, so not totally ready to be on their own. (They usually stay with mom until they are about 8 weeks old and confident flyers.)

They followed my mom everywhere she went...


My dad searched all over the place but couldn't find any sign of the mom or a nest. So, my parents made a little make-shift home for them in a large storage container: water from the lake, a nest (an old bird's nest), and rocks to climb from the water to the nest.

I volunteered to go to the animal feed store and get duck feed for them and when I brought the food over, my heart melted at the sight of them. They were SO CUTE. I'd left my phone in the car, so I don't have a picture of them in their little home, but this is the cutest video of them following my mom around in the yard:

My parents are taking care of them for now, but I'm not sure what the permanent solution will be. There is a house on the peninsula that I run by on my favorite route and they take care of ducks year-round. They even have a large coop that the ducks can wander into and stay warm in the winter.

When Phoebe was much younger and we used to let her outside, I found her playing with a duckling in the side yard--the poor thing was running away and she was chasing it, batting at it with her paws. Thankfully, she didn't hurt it, but we had no idea what to do with it. We looked for the mom, but Phoebe likely chased the duckling from the marsh across the street into our yard and we couldn't find the mom anywhere.

Phoebe's "present" for us in 2011

I had the idea to ask the people on the peninsula about what we should do and they said they would take care of it. They were so nice and they said other people have done the same when they've come across a stray duck. So, I mentioned this to my parents as an option. They said that my brother may take them (he has an enormous pond), but I'm not sure what they decided yet.

Anyway, they are SO CUTE. When I was over there to drop the food off, they were chirping at me like crazy. There was one in particular who kind of stood out from the others and did about 75% of the insistent chirping and it reminded me of Duck (who meows at me all day long like he's having a conversation). Duck even chirps as he watches birds out the window; I'm not sure what else to call the noise he makes! It literally sounds like chirping. I thought it was funny that the name Duck suits him quite well!

Well, I am keeping this short for once because we're *supposed* to do a family afternoon/evening. The plan was to cook out on the grill, but it's raining--so that's a bummer. Also, Eli was asked to play in the varsity baseball game today, so we may end up sitting in the rain for that. And Noah talked about possibly going into work. So who knows what we'll do--it's so hard to make plans when you have teenagers ;)

2 comments:

  1. That's so cute! We have a bunny nest right outside of our kitchen window. Nature is so cool. We can see how the mother rabbit makes the nest, and how cautiously she hops over to it. I don't know a lot about ducks, but maybe they'll fly over to the marsh when they learn how to fly?

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  2. Love this. Thanks for a much-needed feel-good post right now.

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