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.)