Policing the yard after returning from today’s early-morning bidness group meeting, what should I find at the bottom of the pool but unmistakable Duck spoor!
And lo! Floating on the surface was a suspiciously mallard-like feather…
Could Duck-Duck have relented? Could she have decided to come back, despite the trauma that drove her to abandon her (probably deceased) eggs last year?
If so, she’s much earlier than she was before. Last year she came around in April, probably too late under the best of circumstances to spawn a successful brood. When she flew off, terrorized by Other Daughter’s cat and by Ruby attacking the cat in a berserk frenzy, we were almost at the end of June: already too hot for ducklings to gestate, and soon to be too hot for survival at all.
But it’s only February now. Weather’s in the mid-80s, which I suppose could suggest romance in the Duckish mind. If she’s pregnant now or gets that way soon, she could lay a clutch of eggs that just might produce ducklings this year. A twenty-eight-day gestation would put hatching sometime in April.
The effing cat has not been back in the yard all year, the damn thing. In my insanity, I topped all the backyard walls with strips of carpet tacks. Once his feet were punctured a few times, “Milo,” the goddamn thing, lost interest in jumping over the wall. Also I think Ruby’s batshit lunge at him may have given him second thoughts about visiting.
Since then, though, Other Daughter has picked up at least one other cat — maybe two. It’s hard to tell: there are a lot of feral cats around here, and you never know who’s feeding the beasts. But of late I haven’t seen any dratted cats in the backyard.
Quacking, however, is likely to draw their attention. I’m afraid Duck-Duck (not being a fool) is incapable of regarding Ruby the Corgi as some kind of duck ally. While the easiest way to get rid of the damn cat is to sic a dog on it, alas, it’s also a very fast way to get rid of nesting ducks.
I want to hope that Duck-duck is back but I wish there was a way for her and Ruby to co-exist more peacefully. Alas, that may not be meant to be.
Last year D-D took up residence on the other side of a fence from Ruby the (former) Corgi Pup. Ruby has a habit of falling into the pool, and since she could get through a dog door, I decided to fence off the area so she couldn’t tumble in unobserved. Or when the water feels like an iceberg has been floating around in it. Dunno whether ducks are smart enough to figure out that there’s some part of a yard a dog can’t get into…but one way or the other, that’s where she ended up.
When the cat came over the wall, Duck Duck put up quite a ruckus, causing me and the dogs to race outside. I set the pup loose on the cat. Ruby’s fast, but she’s not that fast…the cat sailed back over the wall and the pup sailed into a frenzy. The duck freaked completely out. Which probably was a reasonable reaction, from a duck’s point of view.