I Want A New Duck

Yesterday Mason was being a wild man, so I asked him if he wanted to go play in the park. On the way to the park we passed his cousin Dylan and aunt Becky down at the duck pond. Mason spotted them and wanted to stop at the pond instead of going to the park, so we did. Now, despite currently living in the city, Dylan’s all country. He had over a dozen fish hanging off his stringer, all of which he had caught using either corn or bread as bait. His real target, however, were the baby ducks.

There are ducks at the duckpond — thus the name — but unfortunately turtles and dogs and other critters have been eating all the babies. Dylan’s new mission (with permission from “the guy that lives by the pond” — I’m not sure that’s an official position, but whatever) is to liberate the baby ducks from the pond via a big butterfly net.

Now I’m telling you, there’s no way I could catch a baby duck with a net on a stick (and I wouldn’t want anyone to see my try, either) but Dylan tore after that flock of ducks like nobody’s business. And sure enough, after just a few seconds of running, he ended up with his very own baby duck caught in his net.

Unfortunately, mama duck was not ready to give up her offspring so easily. The mother duck raised her wings, began hissing, and ran circles around Dylan. Swinging the net with one hand and holding the baby duckling in the other he tried his best to defend himself, but mama duck was plain out pissed. Eventually Dylan just started running and the big duck chased him for a minute before retreating back to the pond. Everytime it saw Dylan it would raise its wings, honk loudly and charge across the water at him again. I have to say the whole thing was pretty entertaining to watch.

Apparently the baby ducks are going to be raised in a cage for a month or so until they are able to defend themselves in the wild. If the baby duck learned anything from its mother, I suspect it’ll have no trouble a’tall getting by.