Why did I start the year with a picture of ducks?
I want to tell you a story that has kept me pondering since Christmas and I can’t solve the riddle about what life is trying to tell me here, and what the moral of the story is supposed to be.
When we went to the farm this Christmas, the ducklings had hatched. Fourteen of them. By the time we arrived there were only eleven left. Three disappeared during the night without trace. The next night was fine, the family was okay, but the following night the numbers were decimated, leaving five, and the day after Boxing Day all the ducklings were all gone. Isn’t that sad? I look at their lovely mellow faces, so content and clueless. Oh, dear!
But this is not the end of the story. While the duck and the drake had a full nest of eggs, the old chick in the pen next to the ducks tried to brood some eggs as well, but to no avail. The whole affair was rather doomed, as there is no rooster about. Still, she was sitting on these duds for ages, not wanting to admit defeat. Luckily the duck had actually laid sixteen eggs, but wasn’t big enough to cover all of them. So two were given to the old hen. The dud eggs were replaced and the hen continued sitting on the duck eggs instead. Sure enough, when time came, these ducklings hatched as well though they shouldn’t be called ducklings, but rather chicklings. Mother hen was clucking around them and like every good mother tried to teach them all she knew about life. Like how to scatch for food (pretty difficult with webbed feet) or having a sand bath. While a couple of feet away the duck family was happily paddling ab0ut in the plastic pond. At night though, the chicken took the chicklings under her wings and that is how they survived. I wonder at what point they will find out that they are not chickens and whether they can survive life with the experience that is handed down to them by their surrogate mother. I certainly hope that the story has an equally happy ending like in the fairy tale by H C Anderson: The Ugly Duckling.
dedepuppets 
Maybe the moral of the story from the old chicken’s perspective is “Never give up hope.”
It looks like the duck Mom and Dad had more eggs than they can take care of so the young ones met with some bad end, except for the ones that got put in the foster care of the chicken. They might be confused, but they might go into the water without the chicken Mom showing them how to swim. :-)
Funny you should say that. I just heard, that the little ones are now in fact swimming and the chicken stays at the edge of the plastic bowl and doesn’t understand the world.
But you have a very good point there, the ducks had plenty and didn’t care enough, while the chook values what she’s got. Though there might be a bit of disappointment when the young ones don’t turn out as expected.
Did you ever discover what happened to the other ducks?
Might have been stoats. It is strange that there weren’t any traces, not a single feather