Don't Be Such a Goose!

We took John's mom down to the Dan River in what had been the Tobacco District.  There is a place on the shore that folks come to feed the ducks and geese, so there is always a flock hanging around to entertain us.

 We know this is a Canadian goose.

Not sure who these guys are...

and these are mallards, a hen and a drake.

Back in Tyler a few years ago, I was hatching all kinds of fowl:  chickens, Bob-white quail, Pearl guineas...  In one guinea nest I found 28 eggs!  Into the incubator they went and thirty days later, ta-ta!, I hear sounds.  I open the lid a tiny bit, peek inside, and, what to my wondering eyes appears but ... but ... but ... a DUCK!  I know it's a duck because of the duck-bill and web feet.  (Duh!)  But we don't have any ducks.  To our knowledge none of our neighbors have ducks.  Apparently some momma duck had been migrating and decided to drop in, find a safe place for her eggs, and laid us a couple.

Oh, well.  God is good.  What do baby ducks eat?  Hmmm.  Might as well try the same chick starter we feed all our fowl with.  Seems to work.  Wonder if baby ducks need to go straight into the water??

I buy a very small plastic swimming pool like our kids used when they were itty-bitty and fill it with a few inches of water.  I put one of the baby ducks in the water, prepared to throw it a life-preserver if necessary.  ZOOM! zoom! zoom!  It was like an underwater silver bullet!  How awesome!  He took to that pool like a duck takes to water.  Wait a minute.  It IS a duck.

And so my life of duck sitting began.  If I was gonna be a good foster parent, I had to figure a way for the little ducks to get in and out of the pool themselves, so I put a giant rock in the middle of the pool and laid a board from it to the edge of the pool.  It didn't take them long to figure out my plan.  In another spot on the outside of the pool I put a ramp up so they could waddle up and take a plunge at will.  

We named them Duck-duck and Quacker-doodle.  Soon their baby down began to be replaced with feathers, and ultimately those feathers were replaced with adult feathers.  That's when we knew for certain that they were mallards - exactly like the ones in the photo above.

This year our neighbors found a baby duck walking down the country road between our homes.  They  scooped it up and brought it to our daughter-in-law.  She and our granddaughter fostered it, and he has grown into a beautiful Crested Mallard.

 I told you God is good!!