| Our neighbor Jana is a music teacher. This being
summertime, she thought she needed a project. A baby
duck sounded like a nice thing, since we have a pond
in the middle of the apartment complex and her balcony
opens right onto it. A duck! How much trouble could
that be? One tiny, happy duck.
As a modern sort of girl, Jana got on the Interwebs
and found a duck supplier in California. Duck suppliers
will Fedex ducks to you, as it turns out. Who knew?
But there’s a minimum order of ten ducks. Well.
Ten ducks. Still, how much trouble could ten ducks
be? And that’s how ten baby ducks came to live
at our little apartment complex. At first we all pretended
the management didn’t know about them, but they
were pretty obtrusive. Happily, they were also pretty
endearing. Five baby white ones, whose type I can
never remember, and five baby mallards.
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They were pretty
endearing. Five baby white ones and five baby
mallards. |
In the fullness of time, though, certain Issues became
clear. One was that the baby ducks didn’t actually
like the water, much. First we tried to help them
along manually:
 |
We tried to
help them along. |
Being a clever girl, though, Jana’s eventual
solution involved a boat or two, depending on the
looseness of your definition of “boat”.
First you lure the duck into a kiddie pool:
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One duck lured
into a kiddie pool. |
Then you don’t give them much choice about
the rest:
 |
The ducks are
shanghaied |
So that was fun. But Jana thought the ducks needed
a real, proper sort of duck house. I keep trying to
combine the words “duck” “house”
and “shantyboat”; shantyduck? Duckyboat?
I dunno. Anyway, you’ve got to like a girl whose
problem solving thoughts turn right away to power
tools:
 |
Nothing like
a girl with a power tool |
The six inch pvc was intended to give a bit more
stability than it looked like having with just the
empty oil quarts. She eventually also added some empty
ten gallon water jugs. Here’s Jana and Kaylen
installing the porch, after the launch:
 |
Jana and Kaylen |
The final, idyllic image:
Stay tuned to see if they ever get any closer… |
