“On our wedding anniversary, we were in the farm and feed store,” explains Kim, “admiring three cute Pekin ducklings. Curt spontaneously decided to buy the babies, Larry, Moe and Curly (named after The Three Stooges), so we could provide our friend’s autistic son, who can’t eat chicken eggs, with duck
eggs.
We had no clue how to tell which duckling was female or male - they look exactly alike from head to tail ... and under. When the three Stooges began laying eggs (male ducks don’t) we finally knew their gender; thwarting Curt’s plans to incubate eggs and raise babies.
He wasn’t going to stop his dream of having the biggest duck herd in our neighborhood!
That’s when his next ‘feather brain’ idea formed.
‘Why don’t we get 20 more ducklings,’ he declared. My disapproval, of increasing our flock of three, fell off him like ‘water off a duck’s back’.
When the babies arrived, I introduced one fluff ball to the Stooges, but the ducks would have none of that!
I thought that since the Stooges were laying eggs they would look at the duckling and think, ‘Hey! Look! We made a baby! Let’s take care of it!’ - but no… they waddled
away honking, ‘Get that ‘ugly duckling’ away from us!’
The other nineteen itty-bitty-fluffies, in unison, stopped chirping at the duck-rucous and looked in the Stooge’s direction at their out of purr-portion alarm.
One would think that ‘birds of a feather, flock together’ but apparently ducklings and ducks have a ‘pecking order.’
When our babies escape their fenced area, the elder ducks sound the ‘duck alarm’ with a
lot of crazy-loud honking. Maybe the older ducks are worried about a deadly small-fluffy-yellow flock attack?!
They say, ‘If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and swims like a duck, then it probably is a duck!’ But, the Stooges are such ‘bird brains’! They haven’t figured out that the now two month old ducklings, which morphed into white ducks, are ducks like them, so they keep their distance.
Ducks play in the water and it gets
everywhere. They are sloppy, but keep themselves relatively clean. Their water and food areas are worse than a two year old’s bedroom - with a mud floor!
Pekins are friendly-domesticated, egg-laying, ducks that weigh 8-11 pounds. They eat A LOT - so you can guess the rest! You don’t want them on your back porch because they, ummm, have poor and squishy bathroom results from their tasty ‘eat a slug and see what happens’ menu!
An
interesting thing is that the Stooges rest under our vehicles and only venture out where there are other roof-type shelters or when we are close.
Their behavior of ‘duck and cover’ is life saving! Occationally, a Stooge tilts her head and looks up. When I follow her gaze an eagle or hawk is circling, soaring up high, scoping out our yard. It’s a puzzle how ducks can hear predator birds from such a distance.
Pekins are known
to follow their owners like dogs, and our loud Stooges make great watch dogs - errr watch ducks.
One morning we heard frantic honking. We ran to the window and saw a bear cub the size of a very large dog. Curt loudly clapped his hands and it ran away. I bet the Stooges ‘honked’ that adventure up in the barnyard, telling the other animals that they should ‘add it our bill’ for security help!
The expression to ‘get
your ducks in a row’ is true. It is the cutest thing watching the young flock when one duckling decides to go someplace and the rest follow its lead - waddling in tandem. It makes me want to break out into a song, ‘Waddle while you work’.
What ‘quakes us up’ is when the ducklings do what sounds like ‘Disney duck laughing’! We hear one start, then soon it sounds like they are telling each other something super humorous. Then, they all erupt into Donald Ducks
laughing. We say, ‘I wonder which ‘bird brain’ is telling funny duck jokes again!’"
