October 13th started off quite nicely. The ducks were awake at sunrise, but so was I so I fed them their chopped greens and that seemed to satisfy them for a while. I brought out my camera and took pictures and video of the ducklings joyfully gobbling their "greens soup", then I led them down to the "swimming pool" . It was a little too early for swimming, so they rooted around in the compost heap for a minute and then headed back to their coop to finish breakfast and do their ducky stuff. I had a very busy day ahead of me so I finished my chores and headed off for a Costco trip with my mom and sister.
After shopping, my mom and my sister stopped by with my niece and nephew. It was a lovely sunny day and the kids wanted to see the animals so we went to the backyard & fed the chickens and ducks and dogs whole wheat spaghetti. Frank got some vegetable scraps. Everyone was having such a good time. My nephew Ryan wasn't too impressed by the chickens, but he was fascinated by the ducks. Everyone left, I had more errands, and when I got back home, I downloaded the pictures I took in the morning and posted them on my Facebook page. I was just about to write a blog post when my daughter called me from downstairs. She sounded troubled, but I figured she was going to tell me that our little dog Lola was limping. I already knew that. I had checked it out and it didn't seem too serious. Instead she told me something was wrong with the ducks.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"They're all dead" she answered.
How was that possible? I was confused. I just saw the ducks, they were fine. How could they all get sick and die so fast? When I went outside to check, I understood. They didn't get sick. They were murdered. I was totally in shock. It wasn't gory or gross or anything, but just sad. Very sad. Five little ducklings, just dead. I knew that my dogs had done it. I knew they probably didn't mean to, and I knew that I had failed as a duck mommy. The dogs had never bothered the chickens, probably because the chickens are ornery. The poor ducklings had no defense. If they had been a little older maybe.
So, no more ducks. My duck plan is on hold for now. I really liked them and I thought they were super cute, but they were much more demanding than I thought they would be, and our yard isn't suited for so many roving birds. It's hard enough to keep the patio clean with chickens, I can't even imagine how it would be with ducks pooping all over it.
I leave you with the final video of ducklings enjoying their morning greens. R.I.P., little birdies.
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