From our friend, Carolyn Suffern, who has been worrying that Harriet is depressed, trapped in the Palais des Peeps. Thank you, Carolyn. Well, I grew up on 40 acres in upstate NY. We had LOTS of snow. My father kept three white muscovy ducks - Joe and his two women. Although they had a coop available, they preferred to stand in the snow, one foot tucked under a wing until the standing foot froze so badly, they switched feet. Joe did consider himself ruler of the roost or the property. He was not given to much sense. Our property was at the county line; our driveway was 2/10 of a mile long and made a loop. When the big county plows came down our country road, they made a pass through our yard, clearing our driveway turning themselves back towards town as they did. Joe liked to stand in the middle of the driveway. As I said, he was white. After the plows went through in one particularly blinding snowstorm, Joe was 1 high and about 3 long - totally flattened by the county plow. The next spring, Joes women sat and sat and sat on their nests, but no ducklings hatched without Joes magic. My father took pity, somewhat weird pity, and obtained a number of fertilized geese eggs from a nearby farm. Alas, Joes women were able to bring these eggs to hatching, but to their utter dismay, their new ducklings soon were much taller and ran faster. These unruly ducklings would not stay in obedient lane behind Mama as she paraded them to the pond. They ran like roadrunners, running far ahead of her. We would see poor mama duck tipping her head from side to side as if she were trying to figure out what she had birthed. I guess the moral is, GO IN THE COOP! Be safe, Harriet!
Posted on: Mon, 28 Oct 2013 16:28:03 +0000
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