Saturday, April 26, 2008

Our Resident Duck

This is a beautiful duck we discovered in one of our flower beds close to two weeks ago. Mark was doing some spring cleanup in our beds and he spooked this duck. This sweet duck chose our home to build a nest and lay her eggs. Thirteen eggs!! As I'm sure you can imagine this created quite a stir!! The boys had to check on the duck multiple times a day and had to be reminded on numerous occasions to give the poor duck some space. They figured out when she started fluffing her feathers she was warning them that they were intruding too close to the nest. The above picture was taken when Judah came to me and said sadly, "There is only going to be 12 duckling. One of the eggs is broken and outside the nest." Hmmmmm.....could they be hatching?
Sure enough!!! A few minutes later the boys rushed into the house exclaiming, "The ducklings are hatching!! And they are gorgeous!!" Now, my boys haven't determined yet that words like gorgeous and beautiful aren't really cool for them to be saying. They had one friend that informed them that the word beautiful is dumb and definitely not cool!! Fortunately they must have forgotten because they flow out of their mouths pretty unabashed.
So, in all we had 10 little ducklings that waddled away the next morning at 6:15. We contemplated waking the boys and then reason took over. In hindsight we should have woken them. Four days later I am still hearing about how disappointed they are that they didn't see them leave. Hopefully they will find it in their hearts to forgive us someday. So, our resident duck has taken leave and now we have an empty nest! Except for the three eggs that remained. Oh, two eggs. The boys took one egg to see if there was a duckling inside. I will spare you the description of what oozed out of the egg. Just suffice it to say I almost lost my lunch!!

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