— Bill Cosby.
The popularity of ducks— often described as the happiest animals in the barnyard— is increasing in many areas of the world.
— Dave Holderread.
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.
— Douglas Adams.
I have a new pet. Her name is Penelope, and she’s a duck.
Sorry the head’s blurry, but she was swimming in the middle of our pool. Ever since our first pool, we’ve had mallard ducks visit every spring. Usually it was just the pair of ducks that wandered the neighborhood, whom we called Daphne and Donald. Sometimes it was Daphne and Donald and a few other bachelors.
This went on for years, even when the coyotes moved into the neighborhood. Then two things happened. We upsized the pool, and my neighbor found the corpse of a female duck buried in her vegetable garden.
For a couple of years we had no ducks at all, and we figured the duck must have been Daphne. Then last year we had a couple of male mallards visit while the cover was still on the pool. There’s usually a few inches of water on the tarp, and they feasted on seeds from the birch tree and probably mosquito larvae. They came a couple of times after the tarp was off, but didn’t really like the chlorinated water. Plus there wasn’t much to eat.
This year we had a new pair of mallards on the tarp of the pool, and sometimes they’d help themselves to the plate of birdseed I’d leave out for the birds on the patio. Sometimes it would be a male and female showing up, sometimes two or three males. But it wasn’t every day.
When they did show up, it was either early morning or late in the day. Once we took they tarp off the pool we were surprised they still showed up because the hubby was pumping the pool full of chemicals to try and get rid of the algae that had formed while it was covered. The pool was the greenest we’d ever seen.
But finally the pool was clean again, and soon only the female mallard was visiting. Then a week ago Friday it was cool enough one morning to have the deck door open. As soon as the female duck, who was having an early morning swim in the pool, saw me there, she hopped up out of the pool and waddled across the deck until she was almost nose to nose with Dinsdale through the screen.
Figuring she must be hungry, I filled a pie plate with bird seed and took it out to her. What surprised me was that she had absolutely no fear of me. She followed quite closely and when I set the plate down, she started gobbling the birdseed up.
And she’s been waited at 6 a.m. at the deck door for me every morning since. I took back my pie plate and gave her a plate of her own, and I named her Penelope. Twice she’s tried to come into the house, and once she started nibbling at my toes because I wasn’t fast enough with the birdseed.
Normally by this time of year, the ducks would have abandoned the pool because it was getting used for swimming. Not only is Penelope still visiting on a daily basis, she began visiting in the afternoon as well, just floating in the middle of the pool. I think she was having her afternoon nap there.
However, this presented a problem on Friday when the hubby wanted to have a swim and did NOT want to share the pool with a duck. A meaner person than I would have taken a video of it and posted it online. It was hilarious!
The hubby tried slapping the water with the pool net, and Penelope would swim out of reach and then hop onto the edge of the pool. So he’d wade his way over to her and splash her to shoo her away, and she’d fly to the other edge of the pool. He shoo her away from there and she’d fly over him and land in the water again. This must have gone on for about fifteen minutes before Penelope gave up and flew away.
She did not return that evening, but she was back the next morning, waiting on the deck. She only stayed for breakfast, she didn’t linger for a bath and a swim like she usually does, but the next day she hung around for a while, having a floating nap, and then jumping up on the edge of the pool to dry off.
I’m thinking there has to be another family in the neighborhood feeding her, I have no other explanation as to why she’s so tame. And I expect she’ll keep coming to visit for the foreseeable future.
At least until I run out of bird seed.
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