Things have been far too serious around here, this week. Last night was a beautiful breath of fresh air as we enacted our own urban version of Robert McCloskey’s Make Way for Ducklings.
Our neighbour interrupted our dinner to let us know that a Mallard Duck and her eight ducklings was caught between our houses.
We knew that the little family had a slim chance of survival if we just left them. So being the passionate nature lovers we are, we decided to capture them all and release them down at the river, about twelve blocks away.
The ducklings were easy to round up, although one little one escaped into the neighbour’s yard and hid successfully in some deep foliage. He soon joined his mates in the Rubbermaid Roughneck. Mother Duck, however, proved much harder to secure.
We finally admitted defeat and wondered if she would follow us, if we simply walked away with her ducklings. Sure enough, as the little box of peeping ducklings moved down the street, Mother Duck ran along behind.
We decided we would try walking down to the river. We would walk forward about 50 paces and then stop and wait for Mom to hear her children peeping in terror and run along to catch up with us. She would occasionally fly a short bit, but mostly she ran along behind us, answering her children’s pleas with the frequent quack.
Just as we reached the river, Mother Duck took to the air and disappeared over the trees. We walked down to the shore and both MrPages and I wondered if we had made a mistake. Mother Duck was nowhere in sight.
I was just beginning to rehearse my speech to the Wildlife Rehabilitation Organization, apologizing for interfering with this family of ducks, and acknowledging that “good intentions” almost always result in tragedy when it comes to wild animals, when a loud quack brought Mother Duck right down to the edge of the shore.
MrPages dumped out the bucket and the Little Ducklings raced down the bank, into the water, and right out to mom. It was beautiful!
We had the most wonderful evening we have had in a long time.
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This was so much fun. Neighbour kids from two other houses came along, and one other family from out street joined us farther along. Page 2 mentioned, quite astutely, that it was like The Bee Tree by Patricia Polacco, where a young girl and her grandfather are following a honey bee back to its tree and they slowly add more and more interested people. Eventually they have a crowd that finds the honey in the tree and has a party together.
Another interesting fact is that ducks are pretty small, but they are very intimidating when you are thinking about trying to grab one to put it in a Rubbermaid bin to take it to the river. Mom following along of her own free will saving me from flesh wounds and her from stress, I imagine.
One of the most fun and interesting evenings of our summer.
This is so beautiful! Oh my children would have been all over that like stink on a pig. They are constantly trying to ‘help’ the birds and bunnies in our back yard. Catching toads, terrifying robins, using my kitchen ware for animal observatories…good times! We had a wee chipmunk in our backyard this week who we fed peanuts to, and whose tail my husband actually managed to pet. What sadness when he turned up dead in our garage somehow.
Oh the conversations about the sovereignty AND benevolence of God that come up in those circumstances (‘but if God cares about the little chipmunk…’ you see where this is going.)
Wow!
Just this weekend we visited the Make Way for Ducklings statues on the Boston Common! I’m sure the little Bronze ducks weren’t nearly as fun as your little noise makers.
Actually, once upon a time – I watched a mama duck reunite her ducklings. One of her ducklings had washed from the pond over a small damn with a good six foot drop to the stream below. I was young, single, and had time to kill – so I watched her for almost two hours. She gradually ‘encouraged’ ALL of her ducklings over the waterfall, then walked around to join them below. Once they had ALL had the ugly experience of surviving the disorienting fall, she gathered them together and guided them up the steep grass back to the path above.