The ducks are now nine days old. In celebration of this occasion, they got to go outside and play. They have outgrown their mailing box, but luckily we still have moving boxes. Not only are the ducks bigger, but they are smarter and faster and more difficult to catch to put in the box to take outside. The first duckling in the box and the last one left outside the box both peep extremely sadly…confused and frightened at suddenly being all alone. Once they are reunited with their sisters, they stop the sad peeping instantly. Andy decided to start picking up the ducks more often to try and get them more used to being handled.

Since ducks don’t eat birthday cake, I decided to give them just a cake pan.

Yes..that is a cake pan we regularly use. If you visit us and have cake or brownies, you may very well be eating something cooked in a pan that ducklings played in. At one point, two of the girls were practicing their Olympic synchronized swimming routine.

When the ducklings were done with their birthday swim, they hopped out of the pan and wiggled and shook like dogs to get some of the water off. They wiggled their little tails and flapped their little wings and shimmied and jigged. Then back into their brooder for a nap.

We were out all morning/afternoon running our weekly errands and buying a tire. (Thanks L. & D. for the anniversary money! It’s quite a nice tire.) When we got home, I dashed up the hill to check on the Crumbs while Andy put away groceries. It was over 95F! Aie! The ducks didn’t seem to care, truly, but with the heat and the smell (ducks poop, you know) I thought it was an appropriate time to air out the garage, clean the brooder, and let the girls have some time in the yard.

We loaded the ducklings back into the box they arrived in for the journey down the hill to the duck tractor. Look at how they’ve grown in just a few days!

Andy guarded them from hawks, vultures, owls, and rabid frogs while I cleaned out the brooder. PHhhhHhhHewie! The lawn hay sure does work well because I had no idea there was a lake of brown liquid at the bottom, and the ducklings probably didn’t either. Here’s a photo of Andy keeping guard.

We bought some grit today, too, and put it out for the girls to chomp. From what I’ve read, if ducks are eating commercial food they don’t really need grit (I guess it’s squishy?), but it’s good for them to have it.

While we were out today, we also stopped in at the Radford Farmer’s Market, which is nice but puny. We also visited the only yarn store I’ve found in the area. It’s not really a store; it’s a corner of the basement level of a store. What they have is nice, but they don’t have a lot, and unless I missed something, they don’t have many books. I guess yarn/knitting isn’t as big around here as back in AA.

I finally located the battery charger for my camera, so I decided to take some pictures of things around the house. I’m not real familiar with flowers, so I’m just guessing what they are. The snakeskin I fished out of the pond – the snake was there as well, but I didn’t try to fish it out.
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No pictures today, alas. The battery died on my camera, and I’m not sure where the charger is. I did want to point out (in case you missed it) the groovy, homemade lawn hay the ducklings are toddling about on. For reference you can view yesterday’s photos.

Baby ducks _love_ lawn hay bedding. It has lots of knobby seed heads to chomp at. Some of the seeds float about on their stems like little flying bugs. It’s good hunting practice for the girls, who I think I may call “The Crumbs” for now. The lawn hay also has a nice bounce to protect delicate duckling knees when running and is flexible at roosting time, flowing around the birds like a bean bag around a human butt. Finally, lawn hay has gaps for things to fall through. Things like food pellets that are for some reason not acceptable to the selective duckling pallet(te?). Things like droplets of water shoveled out of the tray by dark brown bills. Things like duck poop.

Yes, duck poop.

Ducks poop. Everybody poops. (Really! I read it in a book!!)

It’s easy to tell when kitties are going to poop because they (hopefully) go to the kitty box. It’s also easy to tell when bunnies are going to poop because they are _always_ pooping. So, it makes sense that it is also easy to tell when a duckling is going to poop. She stretches out her little body, head going in one direction and tail in the other. (It looks like she’s squatting over an imaginary potty.) Once in position, she wiggles a little bit and–SPLAT–with the sound of a wet fart a sixth-grade boy would be proud of….the duckling poops.

(Okay, so maybe the duck poop doesn’t really fall through the lawn hay. It’s more like the poop settles into the nooks and crannies of the hay. I needed a lead in to talk about duckling poop, and I really wanted to talk about lawn hay, and I like transitions and working topics all in together, so I took some literary license. Or mabye that was a parking decal. I’m not sure.)

Last night when I got home from work there was a message on the answering machine from a post office guy in Roanoke. “Um, we have some, um…ducklings? here for you. If you want to pick them up here instead of waiting for them to get to your post office, come on by!” In the background we could hear our little babies cheeping for us. Too bad we didn’t get the message until after the post office closed!

We’d prepped the brooder the night before, so we were all ready for them. All that was left to do was wait until morning when the ducklings would arrive at our local post office and we could get them!

At around 6:45am, the phone rang. It was Pat, our rural letter carrier!

“Your ducklings are here!” she said with a smile in her voice (who can resist the charm of baby animals??)

“YAY!!!!!!!!!!!”

“We open at 7:30.”

“YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We’ll be there!!”

I hung up the phone, ran downstairs, leapt onto the bed, and started hopping up and down and cheering, “THE DUCKS ARE HERE!!!” Andy was still asleep…and didn’t seem to quite be feeling the joy. (I have to add here that my acrobatics really sound more impressive than they were since the bed is a mattress on the floor.)

“WAKE UP WAKE UP! THE DUCKS ARE HERE!!”

“mfflemffle”

“WAAAAAAAAAAAKE UP!!!!” (bounce hop bounce)

“mffffflesnarflemrfffle”

Andy finally woke up, and we headed out the door. Alas, we got to the post office 5 minutes early, and it wasn’t open yet. We stared forlornly in the front window, but if anyone was in there they didn’t care. Instead of loitering like silly city folk, we took a walk down a side street and listened to cows bellowing and saw some of that groovy butterfly weed plant from the Booker T. Washington monument. On our way back, we saw the post office guy putting up the flag (he kept letting it touch the ground!!!). We followed the post office guy into the post office. He seemed grumpy. Did he not know our ducks were there?!?! He unlocked the door and turned on the light and pulled up the little shade hanging down at the counter and (without smiling or saying hello or anything!) shuffled past us and went back around behind the counter.

“can i help you?”

“We’re here for our DUCKS!” (bounce bounce)

He turned around and wandered off. I saw a lady in the background (was it Pat? I dunno!) smiling. _She_ knew about the ducks! The post office guy shuffled back over to the counter, set down a box of chirps, scanned it with some top secret post office gizmo, and pushed the box across the counter to us.

“YAY!!!”

He sort of stared at us.

“Um, can we borrow some scissors to open it to make sure everyone is okay?” (That’s what you’re supposed to do…look at in them in front of the post office person. If the ducks aren’t okay, the post office person files the report for you.)

Post office guy sighed and turned around and got scissors and cut the plastic straps holding the box closed. I lifted the lid and there they were….

Seven (we got a bonus one) teeny, fuzzy, peeping blobs of ultimate cute!

We drove home. Me behind the steering wheel; Andy with the box of ducks on his lap. He peered in at them…

“Aren’t they supposed to be white?”

“Um, they are called _Khaki_ Campbells.”

“Oh. … … Are their eggs white?”

“Maybe!”

“Can I pet them?”

“I’m not sure. You should probably not bug them too much.”

He looked sort of sad, “Oh. Okay.” And he peered at them through the holes in the box…announcing each time one stuck her beak out….holding the box in the air to keep it level when we went around curves.

Before I even got out of the truck Andy was halfway up the hill to the garage where the brooder is. We put the box down in the middle of the brooder and took off the lid and stared at the ducks. I think we both expected them to hop out of the box…but they are teeny ducks not frogs or rabbits. We each started scooping up birds and setting them down gently in the straw.

I’d read somewhere you should put some shallow dishes of water in the brooder when the ducklings first arrive to make sure they can reach the water. I also read you should put little bits of green food in the water for them. Maybe the dishes weren’t shallow enough because instead of drinking, snacking ducklings, we got this:

How can you beat that? (happy sigh)

We watched the ducklings eat and drink and play and run around. Andy (responding to my constant, “Are they warm enough????”) adjusted the heating lamp a few times and put up a cardboard baffle around the exterior (to keep out drafts (and also to keep in ducks when they get bigger)). I tossed baby duck kibble into their water. Good stuff.

Finally, I had to go to work. I wanted to grab a blanket and crash on the floor right next to them and watch them all day, but no. (sad sigh) Andy’s checking on them and making sure they are warm enough and have enough food floating in their water and is sending me updates. Here’s one more picture for you and for me:

Andy and I were both very sad when we discovered our bees died early this spring. We’d hoped to bring them to the new place, but a hot/cold snap zapped them. Alas, by the time we discovered our hive was dead, it was too late to get new bees. (You’re pretty much outta luck if you don’t order by Christmas.)

Thursday Andy found an ad for an auction…where they were selling two hives of bees! YAY!

The auction started at 10, but we showed up at 9 to check things out (and to make sure we wouldn’t be late if we got lost, which, remarkably, we didn’t). We trekked down to the hives, which were down a dirt road and up on a hill. See them up there?

We went up to check the bees out, and I decided I’d be Super Bee Woman and open one of the hives to check things inside. The bees weren’t pleased and decided to go for a ride on my head. (But how did they get past the veil, you ask? Um. Yeah. Wasn’t wearing the veil.) At one point, a bee was crawling up and around behind my left ear. Bzzzzzzzz. Two got stuck in my hair, but Andy got those out without any deaths of bees or stings of Cabols…alas, one bee decided to give up her life on my chin.

I flicked the stinger out with my fingernail. (I thought about asking Andy to help with that, but I do learn from my mistakes.) Good thing we had some extra time to get some Benadryl from a nearby gas station. I popped two and except for a little tenderness and a quarter-sized red spot, I’m okay so far.

By the time we got back from the drug quest, things had started hopping at the auction. Look at all those people!

The bees didn’t come up for bids until about noon. We got both hives!

Alas, we couldn’t take them home then because it was the middle of the day and the bees were all out getting food. We stuck around at the auction for a bit longer and then went exploring. We stopped at the Booker T. Washington monument / park to pass some time. It’s a neat place to hike about, and they had two fuzzy pigs, some cranky geese, and a small flock of sheep. There was a field with these tall flowery-weed-looking things in it…and the flowers were COVERED with butterflies and bees. I want some of those plants!

After lunch, a nap, and a bit more driving around, we went back and got the bees. It wasn’t fun. There were a lot of mad bees. Bees. Bees. Everywhere bees! But we got them in the truck and wedged in and headed home. I could see the strays in the back of the truck trying to get out. It was both unnerving and mesmerizing. Bzzzzzzzz.

The bees are now in our yard down by the barn and garden. We need to get some stands built for them, and we really need to put some supers on. We’ll get to that later….for now it’s just really nice to have bees again.