Just ducky, pt. 2

Britt was eager for our baby duckies to "patch" but, when it finally happened, she slept through the whole thing. Which was probably just as well, since there was a bit of trauma involved.

We checked on the mama duck Sunday night and saw a little baby peeking out from underneath her, so we went away and let them do their thing for a while. In the meantime, I looked online to see what to expect next, and learned that she would probably lead her babies to the pond early the next morning.

We went out to check again a couple of hours later and saw her standing on the other side of the sidewalk with her babies gathered around her:



I told Mikey that I didn't think she was supposed to take them to the pond until morning, just as he leaned over to peek into the abandoned nest.

Guess what he saw in the nest?

Go ahead, guess.

You'll never guess.

It was a damned possum! Mikey chunked a rock at it and it ran off, but there was also a lone baby duck still in the nest that didn't look at all right. Not knowing what else to do, we went back in the house to give the mama duck a chance to take care of things:



When we came back out a little later, all the ducks were gone, except for the one still in the nest, which was dead. So Mikey took off down the street toward the pond to see if they made it there safely. He did find them on their way to the pond, and we've been meaning to go over there all week to see how they're doing (it rained like a mofo later that night and got pretty chilly), but haven't managed to yet.

We think she left here with seven live ducklings. When I was making the dead one go away I found a couple of unhatched eggs in the nest; I broke them open and saw that they were unfertilized. Which was good, because I was afraid she'd been chased off her nest before she could get them all hatched.

Anyway, Britt was extremely disappointed that she had missed everything, and also because she had wanted to ask the mama duckie if she could keep one of her babies for a pet, an issue that I am very happy to have avoided.