It all started innocently enough with the click of a shutter and ended with five of us in the water and one standing poolside, screaming invective. Despite the rather dramatic end to the situation, Operation Duckpond was an unqualified success.
Last night just before heading off to teach aikido, Kathleen spied some visitors to our home:
While Kathleen snapped a few pictures, I distracted the dogs so they wouldn’t try to find out what she was doing. (Those wacky whippets…they are nothing if not incorrigible nosy parkers.)
While Mrs. Mallard and her babies swam around the pool, I shared photos and stories on Facebook about their cute antics. Mrs. Mallard would jump out of the pool, trying to get the babies to follow her. Meanwhile, the babies would just stay in formation, floating floating floating. It was very cute, that is, until I received an email from my friend, Karen. The Mallard family had apparently spent the afternoon in her pool and were unable to leave until a series of duckling-sized pool steps had been built for them. She also warned me that one duckling, the darkest one, seemed to be rather clever and another more yellow one struck her as being a little “slow”.
Gulp.
I put the hose in the pool and started filling it, thinking that if I got the water level as close to overflowing as I could, then the babies would have a better chance of getting out. An hour or so later, Kathleen arrived home and we surveyed the situation together. Even though the water level was higher, it still wasn’t enough to get the babies over the lip of the pool.
A few Facebook status updates later, we had a plan. We’d build a rescue ramp.
(Okay, it wasn’t so much as “build” a ramp as it was “go find one of those ramps that Wayde uses to load his dirt bike on the truck and put it in the pool”.)
Kathleen and I stood on opposite sides of the pool, waving our arms in an attempt to corral Mrs. Mallard and her babies towards the ramp. Unfortunately, as their previous experience had been with steps, the ducklings didn’t really know what to do with the ramp. Well, they didn’t know what we wanted them to do with it; they found its underside to be an excellent hiding place from those humongous creatures with wildly flapping arms.
By now the sun was gone and nighttime had set in. Obviously, it was time to take drastic action.
Kathleen and I put on our bathing suits.
Once we were both in the pool, our plan was to have one person flank the Mallard family and herd them towards the ramp. The other person would wait in the shallow end, poised to finesse the herding operation.
Well, that was the plan. As I swam out to begin the flanking, Mrs. Mallard led her babies to the deep end and jumped out of the pool. Seeing an opportunity, I decided to herd the ducklings into the corner of the pool and just lift them out on my hand.
Mrs. Mallard most definitely did not like this idea and stood poolside, screaming all sorts of duck vulgarities at me. My primary thought at the time was “Thank god these aren’t geese!”
One baby pushed itself into a jump the moment it felt my hand under its feet. One down, two to go.
Next up was the more yellow one. Karen was right; this little guy might be a little slow. He just sat there on the water’s surface, waiting for me to scoop him up. What if I’d been a raccoon? or a whippet? He’ll not be long for the gene pool if he doesn’t smarten up!
Two down, one to go and, wouldn’t you know, fate had saved the best for last…the clever one. He tried everything in his little duckling bag of tricks to get away from me, from trying to deke me out to trying to outswim me.
Update
The ducks were back this morning. At one point, the mother and one chick were in the dog yard. I managed to distract the dogs before they saw them. While writing the previous paragraph, I caught Rogie out of the corner of my eye, picking something up in the yard. Yes, it was the clever duckling.
I guess the mother took the one baby who could jump out of the pool for a walk…right into our dog yard. The mother was scared off by the dogs, leaving her ducklings behind.
Rogie dropped the baby when I screamed “No” and slunk off to watch from a distance. I put the baby back in the pool and he swam off, no worse for wear. I wish I could say the same about one of his siblings. The more yellow baby was “nodding off” in the pool…perhaps he’d been in the water too long.
Kathleen and I have taken him out and set him beside the pool in a shade-dappled warm spot. Meanwhile, the mother flew a grid pattern overhead and, once we cleared out of the pool area, the other two ducklings were able to signal their location to her.
I don’t think the yellow baby will make it but hopefully the other two will be able to escape our yard (relatively) unscathed.
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