Ducks

The exciting news from here at the Golden Hour Ranch and Circus is regarding the ducks. The ducks have a purpose: They eat slugs. Slugs eat young sprouts and just about anything that grows. Nobody but ducks eat slugs and the slugs can destroy a garden in a night. Without the ducks the only way to grow a garden is to create a nasty chemical defensive barrier and a lot of diligence. The GHR&C is slug haven.

The ducks also lay a lot of eggs that are considered a gourmet item and people pay me good money for them or I barter with them. I also make a lot of egg noodles with them too. So my three ducks are valuable items. 

Ducks periodically lose their feathers and grow new ones, called molting. My ducks recently did that and discovered that they could fly so yesterday we clipped one of their wings. I always clip the right so I can have only left wing ducks on the ranch. Clipping the flight feathers doesn't cause the ducks any pain but there is always a bit of drama around getting a hold on them to do it. 

Well yesterday after we had clipped them I heard a flapping of wings and a ruckass so I went to find out what was going on. I couldn't see the ducks right away but what I did see was a lone bald eagle low to the ground right above where the ducks we last seen. Now there's a big bird. Anyway it didn't have duck but we could only find two of the three. Abdul was missing. We named the duck Abdul because it was the biggest but he turned out to be a she too. 

We figured that there must have been a pair of eagles and the other one had already taken off with Abdul. We thought about looking in some of the big trees to see if we could find him but then we figured it would be too late and who really wants to see their pet duck get ripped to shreds and not be able to do anything about it. You get a one way ticket to jail if you shoot an eagle. So we locked up the other two - Custer and Elli and wrote Abdul off. 

On the way back to the cabin I noticed something crouched underneath the stairs and low and behold there quaked Abdul. He must have fought off the attack and escaped. This time.