Dem R Ducks

So last night after walking Trucker, Jeff was hanging out in the backyard while I talked to our neighbor.  When I came back there he said, "you have to come see this".  Ooooh, what was so exciting? 

He was in the middle of trimming up our last Maiden Grass and had the shears at hand and everything.  He was pointing under the Arborvitae that is right next to the grass.  I was leery.  I don't trust him to not show me something utterly gross or disgusting, I was thinking dead carcass of some sort.  Yuk.  He assured me it wasn't "scary", hee hee.  I looked and immediately gasped. 

I couldn't tell exactly what it was at first.  I knew it was a nest, but of what, kittens?  bunnies?  I looked a third time, eggs.  Hunh.  There was a HUGE nest on the ground under a tree of eggs, an even dozen of whitish, yellowish enormous, almost chicken egg size, eggs.  What in the world?

I looked at Jeff, perplexed.  What builds a nest on the ground, geese?   We are at least a half mile from the neighborhood pond.  Seems like you would want to build your soon to be swimming infants by a pond, not by a fence in our backyard where a DOG lives.  Oh my.

So we talked to our neighbor, she is a grandma and very wise about nature stuff.  She looked at it and said, ducks.  She has been watching a pair of ducks (mommy and daddy) in her backyard latelly and jokingly said to her husband, "sure hope they don't build a nest in our backyard"!  Lucky us.  Right as we were talking we looked over the fence into our other neighbors yard, there were two ducks splashing around in the inch or two of water that was on the top of their pool cover.  This is not a pond, mommy and daddy duck, this is a pool with a yucky film of pollen, leaves and other gluck that has accumulated over the winter.  By the way, when that cover comes off it will be CHLORINATED water, not water that you want your precious babies swimming around in.  Not to mention the fact that there is no food for them in that pristinely blue water.  I am not sure that a duckling could even get OUT of the pool, another terrible problem. 

Then I start thinking of predators.  Um, let's see, Trucker the Dog lives in this yard for one, clearly they didn't do a lot of reconnaissance when they set up house.  There are not one but two neighborhood cats, who help keep the mole population down and evidently now will help with the duckling population.  We also have a hawk that hangs out in our Blue Spruce tree.  It is going to be a war zone Mutual of Omaha style in our yard.

And the poop, I am sure we are going to see our fair share of duck poop.

But regardless of all that, it would be really cool if these ducklings hatched and then slowly grew and the kids could watch.  I will not feed this ducks, that I assure you.  These ducks will need to make it on their own.  I also won't be on carcass clean up duty, Jeff will need to handle any issues there.  But I will say a little prayer for their family and that their babies grow up and fly far, far away.