Camping Out

Sleepy Ducklings

The big news these days is that Theo and I sleep outside now!  We stay outside most of the time.  We love our little corner of the backyard!

The first few nights, Mom was pretty worried about us.  She'd come outside in the middle of the night and check on us. Of course,  we were fine.  I'd tell her to go back in and let us get some good REM sleep!  It was very disruptive.  We are ducks; we're meant to be outside for quack's sake.

Theo and I have been busy.  Busy Growing.  It's hard work and takes a lot of our time.  It involves a lot of eating, drinking lots of water, making a big mess of the water, lots of little duck naps, lots of swims in the pond.  We also spend a lot of time practicing our preening.  It's important to be a well groomed ducky.
We both still have our soft yellow downy fluff, but I have cute little white pin feathers coming in on my tail!  My tail flips up in the back.  Theo's has a little sideways swirl to it.  Theo's bill is still kind of a pink color - his feet too.  I still have my beautiful orange feet.

Have I said how much we LOVE to swim in the pond?  We try to swim at least twice a day.  More if Mom has time.  It'll be nice when we can swim by ourselves.  I love to swim underwater.  Just like Flipper - he's my hero.  I pretend I'm a dolphin, just like him!  I can hold my breath and swim all the way around the pond underwater.  Theo tries, but he can't really do it as good as me.  He can only make it about 1/4 of the way around.  But I'm older.  (I'm really only 4 days older than Theo, but I'm almost twice a big!)   He loves to follow me around and do what I do, but really, when it comes right down to it - he is his own duck.  He doesn't let me push him around too much.  He just loves me and likes to be close to me.

Today, Mom took me out of the pond to dry me off.  (She says my downy fluff is like a sponge -  just soaks up the water!)  She turned around to pluck Theo out of the water, and he was already out, padding across the dirt toward us!  He had hopped out of the pond all by himself!  I haven't even done that yet!  I hope he'll show me how to do it next time we swim!

One of the good things about having ducks is that we love to eat bugs!  We also love le escargot! Izzz yuuuuummmmmy.  And good for you!  Lots of protein.  So, if you have a snail problem, we're your guys.  We also don't carry any diseases, just so you know.  Our biggest vice is (let's say it together): we poop quite a bit.  Mom would say: 'a lot'.  But, again, we can't help it - it's just the way the God made us.  Mom keeps the hose handy and washes down the deck after we've had 'free range' time!  One thing, I'm proud to say, is that we haven't yet pooped in our pond.   Mom says having ducklings is a lot like having a baby - you seem to talk a lot about the poop.  It's not such a big deal to us, but Mom seems a little fixated on it.

Our busy Little Girl

Our Little Girl came to play today.  She likes to 'take care of us'.  She's spends a lot of her time letting us out of our pen, putting us in the pond, taking us out of the pond and putting back in our pen!  We ran her all over the backyard this afternoon!  She can't catch us - ha!  But, Mom eventually scoops us up and lets her hold us.  She likes to do hold us a lot too!   Which is really quite nice.  We snuggle in her arms and take little naps.  She gives us kisses on our heads!

News from the Max front:
Some of our neighbor boys came to visit.  They were chasing us around trying to get us to go back into our pen.  Max ran up behind one of the boys, jumped up and grabbed his pants!  He almost pulled them down!  I think he was protecting us!  Maybe he does like us. I hope so.  I'd like for us to be friends.  Of course,  today when he finally came close to me, sniffing, I pinched him on the nose with my bill.  That may not have helped the 'friendship' too much!  I'll have to use a little more finesse next time!