The Sunday Morning Variety Show on Kutztown Road

Yesterday morning before getting dressed I decided to clean out the duck run, since the thaw of snow was revealing an archeological treasure of sludge-filled containers. The coop needed some fresh shavings, too. I was trying to beat a forecast of rain. A bright green front loomed on the radar.

I refreshed the coop with shavings, then dug into the mess exposed by the thaw. I keep the duck feeder on top of a snow shovel head. It works as a tray to keep the feed from getting all over the ground. This needed cleaning, and there was a second feeder, a red plastic one, from the early days of the new ducks being introduced to the group. I'd forgotten about an egg carton filled with corn, which resurfaced. The water container needed a cleaning. Ducks are adorable, but very messy creatures.

The sludge filled items I carried over to the compost heap in the kitchen garden, where I began to scrape the fetid gunk off with the end of a leek. I'm never prepared with a tool, even though I know I'm doing this work, so I just use whatever is handy from the heap. The uppermost layer of the compost heap right now is an array of onions and deflated, moldy oranges, useless tools for scraping, so the leek was a sign of good fortune. I began the work of cleaning the shovel head, and the plastic feeder, as the propane delivery guy was parked on the road, blocking the lane. 

A sporty car from the 90s, something white and sleek with tinted windows, pulled up behind the truck, and paused there with a full view of my plaid-clad, scrunchie ponytailed, pajama-pantsed self, holding a leek in one hand, and a broken shovel head in the other. I waved with the leek end.

Littleface, seeing an opportunity to add to the show since he had an audience on both sides of the paddock, leapt from the barn stall. He sailed through the split in the tree, and caught his leg on a poison ivy vine, which trailed behind him like a fuzzy shooting star (good goat!). Not one for curtain calls, he walked a few steps on the rock pile and munched on a thorny rose. 

An applause of quacks issued from the pond.

As Easy as Herding a Duck

"How do you herd a duck?" is a Google search string I've typed recently, and of course, I found a helpful video on YouTube. What we've learned in the past two weeks as we take the ducks to and from their tractor, is that when frightened, ducks will play-doh themselves through small spaces, get stuck in concrete blocks, huddle in brambles, and veer off under stairwells then shoot out the bottom openings like "Vend-O-Duck."

We've also learned that they have personal kinespheres, just like people do, and once you learn their comfortable space bubble, you can use their flock instincts, and some cooked corn, to get them to go where you want them to (mostly). This morning we had our first real success, getting them out of the brooder in the greenhouse, and outside to the pyramid without any real snags. This is the first morning they are out there early, rather than later, and with any luck, we'll get them into their coop tonight.

A couple of weeks before lockdowns and social distancing began, eight ducklings arrived at our local post office and I got a call from the postmaster, Fran, to come "pick up your box full of chirps." We've been fortunate for the past two months to be preoccupied with ducklings. We were not prepared for the constant stream of care required, or the endless questioning over brooder light wattage, how to build a secure coop, or what kind of grit is needed for their digestion. But I am glad we've had the vast opportunities for creative problem solving while we've been sheltering in place. It's kept our minds and bodies busy.

I've annoyed countless friends with texts of duck pics (for the record, you really need to proofread your text messages when mentioning ducks). I've hounded my friend Howard, the Animal Whisperer, for advice and guidance.

Ducks grow fast. They are messy. They outgrew everything within a few weeks, and we lost two of them (Moonlight and The Undertoad). They've spent the past few weeks growing in a brooder made out of a livestock waterer, in a corner of the warm greenhouse.

We began to build a coop with supplies picked up, and later had delivered, the chicken wire and two by fours piling up outside our house. We researched, and planned, and neither of us has carpentry skills or any particular spatial genius. We ended up with what I call "Patchy Milatchy," or "The Duck Bunker," or "The Quack Shack."

The whole build was a "it's a learning experience!" of problems overcome with ah-ha solutions. One I applied yesterday. A couple of screws were poking out of the walk-up side of the ramp, so at Dan's suggestion, I grabbed a couple of wine corks and screwed them on. Ingenious.

The coop has to be weasel proof, and it is, we hope. It is so tightly built, that when the wood swells during rainy weather, the door is difficult to shut. It's do-able, and then locked down with two sliding hasps.

We also built a "duck tractor," a moveable safe haven for them to be in while we're not out on the property with them. It's a pyramid, because that was the easiest to build with the materials we had, and also Dan's idea.

I'm not sure what would be out there for them if I was left to my own devices to build something. I found myself outside this week on a sunny day, snagged in a curl of poultry netting, with a handful of those jabby fenceposts at my feet, trying to envision a duck run with the materials we had left over. I gave up. So for now, the ducks will move from their coop to the tractor, or out onto the pond.

My next search string for Google is, "How do you get ducks to come in from swimming on the pond?"