Birds of a Feather

A few weeks ago now, we got to bring home a cute little pair of ducks from J's school.  Mrs. K, the science teacher, seems always willing to take on a new little creature, from lizard  to snake, to bunny... oh the bunnies we have a school.  The bunnies will be passing third grade; they have definitely learned to multiply.  

She's incubated and hatched a dozen baby chicks.  
When someone brought her ducklings she welcomed them.  And then she reached her limit.  Not on their cuteness, but on the level of well...oh, how do I put this delicately....poop.  

When she heard from J that I was willing to give them a new home she was thrilled, beaming across the courtyard and nodding.  Then I found out her limits on animals.  

J had had enough of them at school, but I just thought they were too darling to pass up.  So we took the carrier to school a few Fridays ago and brought them home.  They have been eating the chicken feed and sleeping with the chickens in the coop.  

They have grown quite a bit since we brought them home, but please meet Daffy and Aflac.

I know y'all are smart enough to figure out which is which. They do NOT like to be separated from each other.  

Today we tried to herd them down to the tank so that they could swim for 'real' vs. dipping into the small plastic tub that I have for them in the coop.  We ended up carrying them and putting them at waters edge, but they were not interested and started heading back up the hill.  

So we caught them again and gently made sure they got more in the water.  They swam just fine, but got out of the water as quickly as they could and ran, with their little bottoms waddling back and forth, all the way back to the coop.  They might think they are chickens; can their food do that???  

Thursday night we had quite a storm blow through and Friday afternoon L noticed that this guy was hanging around.  Friday night another storm came through and Saturday morning I caught him napping on the post in the morning sun.  

he continued to rest there for quite a while and then finally I heard him move to the roof.  

Where he walked up from behind the chimney all the way to the peak of the roof and

he walked over the other side.  I didn't follow him, I assumed he wanted some privacy. 

We've had pigeons take refuge here before particularly after a bad storm and they had leg bands.  This guy did not have a band that we could see.  

I guess he got his bearings straight again, was rested and was ready to go back on the road.  We were glad to have him stop by.