DUCK COMMANDER UPDATE.

Well, it’s been a while since I first blogged about our little Duck Commander, Tubby, and someone asked me the other day for an update…so here it is.  Yes, I still have one duck left of the three I started with.  And if you remember, the last duck standing was actually a duck we bought at the feed store to keep a rescued duck company.  She’s a mostly a black duck with some white feathers.  She was supposed to be an all black duck with a green sheen to her feathers…something called a Cayuga Duck.  In the right light, you can see the green sheen on some of the feathers.  But who knows where the white feathers came from?  Apparently daddy wasn’t who everyone thought he was.  LOL  

Just sayin…

Anyway, Tubby came to live with us as a companion duck back when my son and grandsons were all living with me.  Now everyone has moved on except one dog and the duck…they are both apparently stuck with me.  LOL  But they are entertaining, so there is never a shortage of laughs around them.

The dog is a little black terrier mix with an under-bite and a huge smile…and yes, he smiles all the time.  He is happy as hell and neurotic as all get out and a total control freak.  He will come to you to be petted and scratched on the belly, but only on HIS terms.  You have to keep one hand behind your back at all times and you can’t even think about picking him up.  If he detects the thought has crossed your mind (and he can), he runs like greased lightning and then taunts you by running circles around you just far enough out of reach that you risk putting yourself in traction if you try to grab him on the run.  So one day soon, I’m going to risk traction to  see if I can pin the little guy down and cut off the two dreadlocks that have formed on either side of his mouth.  Although, my fifteen-year-old grandsons thinks I should leave them because he thinks they look like a Fu Manchu moustache.  Funny how a Fu Manchu moustache makes actors look sinister, or like great thinkers.  The only thing it does for neurotic little Skay is make him look goofy.  LOL

So…back to the duck…I think where I left off with my last update was that Tubby was continuously trying to hoard eggs and sit on a nest in hopes of one day having offspring.  Well, that hasn’t changed.  She still hides her eggs way back under a big bush so they are impossible to get to on a daily basis.  Then when she accumulates ten or twelve of them, she starts officially “sitting” on the next.  That’s when my neighbor or I have to crawl back in there and clean out the nicely feathered and warm nest—before the eggs start to explode in our summer heat.  And Tubby still hasn’t learned to control her egg laying, so we still find the occasional egg at the bottom of the duck pool.  For the life of me, I can’t imagine how awkward it would be to suddenly have to lay an egg while swimming…but then that’s just me.  LOL

Tubby and Skay continue to play through the fence and we are now convinced that having grown up next door to the dogs, Tubby believes she is a dog.  She stands at the fence and calls the dog over to play with her and when he obliges, she sticks her beak right into his mouth and tries to grab his tongue while he pretends to bite her beak.  Total weirdness!  Then when it’s feeding time, she’s right there quacking and begging for her share of the dog food.  Yes, the duck shuns poultry food and begs for dog food.  She literally thinks she is a dog!

Now, the really strange and unusual part of this is the duck’s latest trick.  Somehow, we have acquired a rat problem outside.  ARGH!  These are not the usual packrats that you will occasionally find on a farm where grains are often stored.  These are the roof rat variety that probably came into the neighborhood on the fruit trucks.  But, in any case, everyone in the neighborhood is struggling to get rid of these suckers and I am no exception.  While I was out of town, the neighbor found a nest in my Bougainvillea.  Really?  Those suckers must have skin of leather to live in a hostile bush like that, but there you have it…rats in the tree.  This bush climbs the fence to the dog run which attaches to the duck pen.  So these suckers are helping themselves to the dog food (translation: duck food) and water in the duck pen.

So one day my neighbor tells me that she’s seen the dog, Skay, trying to catch a rat and that he’s pretty good at it.  My first thought is eeeeewwww…stop that, Skay!  I don’t want him to get bit…let the traps do the work!  Then I remember that some dogs were actually bred to hunt rats…maybe we’ve finally found Skay’s skillset???  Well, we continue to work diligently to trap and eliminate the rats when the neighbor comes over again to tell me she found an almost dead rat in the duck pen.  Okay, nothing earth shattering about that except that the half-dead rat was in the duck’s mouth.  HUH?  Yep, Tubby had been watching Skay try to kill a rat, so when she found one of her own, she did what any self-respecting guard dog would do…she grabbed it by the tail and started beating it against a railroad tie.  Now that’s a damn duck!!!

So here we are, our little band of weirdness, ensconced in our castle fighting rats in the mote.  But we are happy, healthy, guarded, and well-fed.  And yes, Tubby can have all the dog food she can eat.  Hell, any duck that can kill a rat can have my food!

So…that’s my story, ducky and daffy, and I’m stickin’ to it.  Hang on tight now ‘cuz we’re gonna go real, real fast!

Love ya, Kayce

The latest on the Quacker.

Hi there!  How are y’all?  Did ya miss me?  Come on…I missed you!  Okay, I know…I’m sounding a needy.  Sorry…but I really did miss ya.  I just had to take a bit of a break to help get my mom back on her feet after the loss of her husband.  But she’s doing much better now and I’m gonna try to get back in the swing of things and get back to the blogging and writing.  So here I am and, shocker, stumped for a blog topic.  Then I got to thinking that y’all hadn’t heard the latest update on the quackers (ducks).  So here goes.

I’m sad to say we are now down to just one duck.  Back in May I had a swarm of bees storm my house while I was at the hospital with my mother and I came home late that night to find Sunny (the buff colored duck) had passed…I think from the bees.  Just seems too coincidental that the bees show up the same day the duck dies, and the horse refuses to go anywhere near the area where I found the duck.  I suspect the bees swarmed Sunny and then made their way to the other side of the yard where they were merrily making a hive in the drawer of my work bench.  So that leaves us with just the black duck, Tubby…the duck commander.

Now, some of you might remember from the last time I posted an update about the ducks that the whole neighborhood was watching these ducks and there was a raging debate over which one was the male and which one was female.  Well, it turns out I’m not a very good farm girl when it comes to duck sexing.  Because while my neighbor and I debated over which duck was the male, both ducks began accumulating a secret stash of eggs under the orange tree and eventually began sitting on a community nest with about 36 eggs in it!  I was in Indiana visiting family when the boys broke it to me that the ducks were sitting and told me how cute it was that both of them took turns sitting on the nest.  Sounded fishy to me…well, maybe ducky…but I reserved judgment until I got home.

So I arrive home, check out the humongous community nest and decide both ducks must be female.  Argh!  That means these poor little girl ducks only think they are going to have babies.  Now for an animal husbandry lesson for the folks out there who don’t know much about ducks.  In order to have baby ducks hatch from duck eggs, the eggs must be fertilized and to fertilize duck eggs requires a boy duck.  Yeah, sorta like people…you gotta have a boy AND a girl if you wanna have babies.  But nature refuses to be denied.  So even a poor, lonely, old-maid duck will try her best to have babies without a boy duck.  But there are no ducky sperm banks, so she’s gotta get creative.  She will lay the eggs and sit the nest until hell freezes over in a valiant effort to carry on the species.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t work and turns out a lot like a false pregnancy where the signs are all there, but no cigar…and no baby duckies.

Oh wait…hell hasn’t frozen over yet.  So why isn’t Tubby still sitting on that nest?  Well, I’ll bet you’ll never guess the answer to that question!  Truth is, we had to take her eggs away from her.  No…that’s not the part you’ll never guess.  I’m getting to that.  You see, it takes about 27 days to hatch duck eggs and Tubby was going on 2 months with her butt on those eggs.  She only left the nest about twice a day to eat, drink, and take a quick swim…then right back on the nest to await the blessed event.  The longer she sat on that nest, the uglier she got, until we had to don protective work gloves in order to shoo her off the nest twice a day to eat.  She was so focused on willing those baby ducklings into existence that nothing else mattered.  I would have taken the eggs away from her sooner, but my step-father had just passed and there was a lot going on with my mother.  So I simply didn’t have time to deal with a neurotic duck.  Besides, she seemed to be okay, just focused on hatching those darn eggs.

But then one day I was working on the computer and I heard her quacking in the back yard, which generally meant she was off her nest to eat, drink, and swim a bit.  But this afternoon, I heard her quacking most of the afternoon and wondered if she’d finally given up on the eggs.

The next morning my neighbor knocked on my door and asked, “Hey, did you notice I took Tubby’s eggs away from her?”

“Oh, is that what happened?  I heard her in the backyard yesterday and wondered if she’d finally given up on them.  Thank you.”

The neighbor laughed and said, “No, she didn’t give up on them.  I saw her walking around covered in black goo, so I followed her to see what she’d gotten into.  She returned to her nest and was sitting on it when suddenly there was a loud pop and she jumped and lifted up and looked under her.”

I know I made a face as I tried to figure out what my neighbor was saying and she only laughed harder.

“You know what was happening?”

I shook my head.  “Not a clue.”

“Those eggs had gotten so rotten that they were exploding under that duck and the black goo was what came out when the eggs exploded.”

Ewwwww!!!  I’ve smelled that black goo…it’s horrendous and makes you want to puke on your new cowgirl boots.  But then the image of poor Tubby sitting on those eggs and having them explode beneath her was just too much to bear and I almost wet my pants laughing at the picture.  Now, don’t get freaked out and worry that her babies died…remember, no boy duck, no fertilized egg, no babies.  Just plain old duck eggs left too long in the heat with an overly attentive duck.  Okay, and a bit of a neurotic duck.  It happens.

But a couple of months have passed now and Tubby is right back to her old self.  She stands at the fence, tormenting the dog who spends most of his day trying to get the duck to stick her head through the fence.  But our Tubby's too smart for that.  She just waits for the dog to stop barking and then she whacks him on the nose with her beak...which just sets him off again.What a pair!

So…that’s my story, ducky and daffy, and I’m stickin’ to it.  Hang on tight now ‘cuz we’re gonna go real, real fast!

Love ya,

Kayce

The Duck Commander Lives In My Backyard!

Nope, I’m not blogging about hot young men with scrubby beards who have lots of guns, drive way cool toys, wear camos and gig for frogs…although I may have to consider doing that one day since Duck Dynasty is my new crack.  I just love those guys!  Yeah, I know…go figure…redneck woman, redneck show with handsome redneck men.  What’s not to love?!

Okay, so back to the subject at hand…the Duck Commander.  What I’m talking about here is a duck, a real live honest-to-goodness walking, quacking, pushy, fight-picking duck.  Yes, I did say pushy and fight-picking.  Not what you think of when you think of a duck?  Well, Tubby ain’t your run o’ the mill duck.  We have the Rambo of the duck world.

Wait…before I get into Tubby’s story, I do need to share my sad news first.  Some of you have asked me whatever happened to Scooter, the little baby Mallard duck we rescued earlier this year.  Well, I’m sad to say we lost Scooter when she was about 3 months old.  She suffered some kind of injury to her neck or back and there was nothing we could do to save her.  But she was sweet and cute and fun to watch while we had her…and she did manage to squeeze out 3 more months of life than she would have had if we hadn’t rescued her from the big duck that was intent on killing her.  But before we lost Scooter, we went out and bought her some real live friends to keep her company and while Scooter is no longer with us, I’m happy to say both her little buddies are thriving and this story is about one of Scooter’s little duck friends, Tubby.

Tubby got his not-so-glamorous name because he’s a little piggy duck—a fat black piggy duck.  Tubby is the first to the food dish and the last to leave…and he won’t leave it until the darn thing is E-M-P-T-Y!  In fact, when I go out to feed the horses in the morning, the first thing I hear is Cody neighing at me.  The second thing I hear is Tubby quacking for food.  Now, Tubby isn’t the only duck we have…he has a little duck friend named Sunny and she has vocal cords too, but Tubby must’ve got the upgraded set because that sucker can be heard 5 acres away, while little Sunny is barely more than a faint echo as she waddles along in Tubby’s wake.  Tubby is definitely the alpha duck.

Tubby has another little friend…er…maybe more of a nemesis.  I don’t know, it’s hard to tell if they hate each other or love each other—maybe it’s the proverbial love-hate relationship.  Tubby’s little enemy-friend is a mangy, toothy, so-ugly-he’s-cute, yappy little dog named Skay.  When we got the ducks, we decided to situate the duck pen next to the dog run.  What the hell were we thinking?  I’ll tell you what we were thinking…we were thinking having the dogs close at night would help to keep the coyotes away from the ducks.  Little did we know the ducks would become pure entertainment for little Skay.  The big dogs will sometimes watch the ducks, but could take them or leave them.  Skay, on the other hand, sits in front of the duck pen for hours on end, watching the ducks and barking at them.  (Good thing we don’t have many neighbors and the ones we do have think it’s cute.)  It’s like duck-TV for the little dog…sort of Skay’s version of Duck Dynasty.”

 

Now, you’d think having a dog running incessantly along the fence line barking at you would make you tremendously nervous if you were a duck, but you would be sorely mistaken.  Because our rotund black piggy duck, Tubby, has become very cocky and has taken to taunting the dog.  He takes every opportunity to strut along the fence line like he doesn’t have a care in the world.  In fact, if he had opposable thumbs, I’m pretty sure he’d be thumbing his nose at the dog because he seems to enjoy the incessant barking.  It’s probably some childhood trauma-induced neurosis that occurs in ducklings who are taken away from their mothers too young.  Or perhaps he gets bored and thinks, “Hey, I’m gonna go get the dog spun up…that’ll be fun!”  Who knows?  But it doesn’t end there. 

Tubby’s latest antics include actually attacking the dog, but it’s not an overt blatant attack…more of a sneak attack, sort of a sucker punch.  Tubby will stand at the fence, with his beak right up to the chicken wire we stretched along the fence to keep the dogs from reaching through.  So, he stands there with his beak just out of Skay’s range and stares at the dog while Skay goes berserk barking.  The dog lunges, the duck never flinches, never blinks…he’s the bad-ass of the duck world.  He just sits and stares at the dog, just barely out of reach.  The minute the dog stops barking to take a breath as he’s almost nose to nose with the duck, Tubby whacks him on the tip of the nose with his beek…just a quick hit, in and out, fast like a ninja.  As you can well imagine, this just drives Skay absolutely bonkers and you can almost see the duck smile as the dog escalates into a frenzy just short of foaming at the mouth.  This can go on for hours and it’s hysterical to watch if you’re not trying to enjoy a quiet afternoon on the patio.  LOL

And that’s not the only trick Tubby does.  Yesterday I was outside doing something in the backyard.  The duck and the dog were both enjoying some quiet time, as was I.  But when my neighbor came through the gate and started talking to me, the damn duck began to quack like someone had wound him up.  I knew he’d already been fed, so no reason for it in the middle of the day…what the hell?  

Well, just as a little backstory…my neighbor helps out around the place.  She makes a little extra spending money by helping with the yard work and some general maintenance stuff around the place.  So for her to be in my yard is a very common thing.  In fact, we had a gate installed between the two backyards to make it easier for us to come and go.  Sometimes I will actually find her cat sitting at my door meowing because she has lost her mom and thinks she’s in my house.  It’s quite the neighborhood! 

Anyway, the neighbor and I are standing in the backyard talking and this duck goes off like an air raid siren.  He is quacking for all he’s worth and staring at us…and Tubby is damn hard to ignore when he’s in serious quacking mode.  I commented that I didn’t know what the hell that duck’s problem was and the neighbor laughed and said, “Oh, I know what he wants.  You mean you don’t know your own duck?”  Huh?  She says, “Come on, I’ll show you.”  So I follow her over to the duck pen where she turns the hose on and puts it thru the fence so it is filling the area around the bushes that are in the duck pen…and I’ll be damned if that chubby black duck doesn’t waddle very quickly over to the running water and start digging for worms.  Really?  Apparently, my neighbor is now teaching our obnoxious attack duck to quack real loud when he thinks it’s time for you to come turn the water on so he can forage for worms…the Duck Commander.

I’d like to tell you a story about Sunny too, but I don’t really have any.  She’s a cute beige colored duck with absofreakinglutely no personality.  She just follows Tubby around like a sweet little shadow.  However, I did actually see her standing at the fence taunting Skay the other day.  Monkey see, monkey do.  She ain’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but it appears she’s picked up at least one trick from her paunchy black sidekick.

So, that’s the end of my duck tale…that’s my story, dizzy and ducky, and I’m stickin’ to it.  Hang on tight now ‘cuz we’re gonna go real, real fast!

Love ya,

Kayce

Fowl Weekend Ahead!

Okay, here we are again…blog day!  But this time, I’m ready.  Woo Hoo!!!  I know…who woulda thunk it?  Kayce is actually starting her blog almost a week early.  Of course, that doesn’t mean I’ll end it before 2am the morning it’s due.  LOL  A master procrastinator has to be careful not to create expectations she may not be able to live up to in the future!

Okay, so what am I going to blog about this time?  Life?  Love?  Laughter?  Hmmm…I’m thinking this one might not go to the “love” category and it’s iffy whether it truly touches on “life” for anyone but me—because this just wouldn’t happen to anyone but me.  So I guess it has to fall under “laughter”.  What, you say, couldn’t happen to anyone but me?  Well, let me unfold the story for you.

I have been in desperate need of what we refer to as a “BMG fix” for some time now.  That’s a brainstorming session with my critique group, the Butterscotch Martini Girls.  Now, despite the name, we do often meet for breakfast, and martinis are not always involved (not ALWAYS, but probably more often than not).  So please understand that, for a change, this event was NOT alcohol-induced…honest!

Okay, here’s what happened.  Tina Gerow, Dani Petrone, and I met for breakfast this morning at the Iron Works, which is a lovely restaurant attached to the Bellair Golf Course in Glendale, Arizona.  I want you to picture this…we are sitting in the cool, air-conditioned comfort of a restaurant overlooking a golf course and a small lake.  There are ducks and geese milling about the lake and serenely gliding over its surface as group after group of well-dressed men in shorts are teeing off in front of us.  (Not a better place in town for a single woman to start her Saturday!)  Anyway, I digress.

As we sat at our cool, comfy table overlooking the greens and the water, we caught up on family shenanigans, we told dating stories, and we then got serious about brainstorming.  One of the things I needed help with was a title for one of my works in progress.  As we talked through some ideas, something out the window caught my attention.  So I switched my focus to the tree outside the window to see what it was that was flapping against the tree.  It was a crane…you know, one of those cute little grey birds with really long legs.  The ones you never seem to actually see in flight, but they always look like an ugly cousin to the flamingo, with the same stilt-legged grace as they wade in water up to their knees.  Yep, that’s the one.  But this one was bent on getting up in the tree.  Okay, it’s a bird…so, what’s the big deal?  Birds get in trees all the time.  But this one has legs twice the length of its body and it’s easily 18 inches from beak to tail.  For some reason, this struck me funny and I pointed it out so we could all gawk in wonder.  This poor crane was bound and determined to get into that tree and he would try to fly up into it with tremendous ado (lots of flapping) and very little success.  He mostly just made it about halfway up the tree, where he would grab the bark with his little feet and flap his wings as he tried to actually climb the tree.  Now, you and I both know cranes can’t climb trees, but apparently no one told this little guy.  So he tried valiantly quite a number of times and about the 4^th or 5^th try (over the period of about an hour), he finally made it into the crook of the tree—only to find that his wings didn’t fit between the branches.  So he floundered a bit and finally gave up and sailed not so gracefully to the ground.  No, this isn’t the funny part.  This was just an oddity that caught our attention and elicited comments on the futility of wading birds trying to perch in trees…sort of like flying fish.  LOL

 

Okay, so the breakfast continues and we discuss all sorts of names for my book.  I bring Tina and Dani up to speed on the story and mention there is a chicken in the story, a mean Bantam (commonly pronounced Banty) rooster that attacks everyone who gets out of a car in the owner’s driveway.  Now, keep in mind that I know this chicken well.  He was a real-life pet from my childhood…and I use the term “pet” VERY loosely!  We used to keep a broom outside the back door so we could defend ourselves while running from the back door to the gate.  Why didn’t we put this chicken in the stew pot, you ask?  My dad loved him!  Why you might ask again?  That would be because my dad did NOT like my Aunt Sarah…and the chicken once kept Aunt Sarah trapped in her car in the driveway for a good twenty minutes, which gained him permanent immunity from the stew pot. 

Anyway…back to the story titles.  Divulging the presence of a mean chicken in my story prompted several enthusiastic rounds of chicken titles…such stunning gems as A Chicken to Remember, My Life With a Chicken, How To Lose a Chicken In 28 Days, A Body A Chimp and A Chicken, My Fowl Weekend, and Romance and Fowl Play.  (None of which will ever grace the cover of my story!)  LOL  We were having a big time of the chicken titles and chicken jokes and were drawing some very strange looks from people at the surrounding tables.  The waitress decided we were nuts and started steering a wide berth around our table, actually going so far as to suggest we could get our own coffee.  LOL  She laughed jokingly, but we’re writers.  We know what a thin line there is between jokes and the truth!

So…picture it in your mind…3 rowdy women sitting at a table in a nice restaurant overlooking a beautiful golf course and a lake with a gorgeous green, laughing and cutting up over stupid (really stupid) chicken book titles.  All of a sudden, I freeze.  I’m staring out the window and I can’t say a word.  I’m stunned.

Tina asks, “What’s up?  The crane trying to get into the tree again?”

I can’t answer.  I’m dumbfounded.  All I can do is stare and point out the window.  I can’t get a single word out of my mouth.

Now Tina and Bev are both turning in their chairs and positioning themselves to see if they can see what I see.  Tina spots something and asks, “What is that?  Is that the crane?”

I finally find my voice.  “No.  No, that’s not the crane.”

Dani asks, “Well, what is it?”

I still can’t move…all I can do is stare…but I know what it is.  “It’s a chicken!  It’s a freaking chicken, a Bantam (Banty) rooster!”

What are the chances?  Now remember, this is a golf course in the middle of town.  A nice restaurant, a pristine green with classy guys teeing off all morning and there…in the middle of the green…and in the middle of our chicken title brainstorming…is a freaking C-H-I-C-K-E-N!!!  And not just any chicken…this chicken is a dead ringer for the little sucker my dad had pardoned from the stew pot!  An identical twin to the little demon I used to send sailing across the yard with the broom as I sprinted for dear life!
Okay, I can’t believe it…I gotta see this up close…this is just too freaking weird.  So I take my cell phone outside and I crawl on my hands and knees across the grass to get as close as I can to this chicken, this demon from my childhood…because without a picture, no one will believe I found the demon spawn of my childhood on a golf course green in the middle of a metropolitan city!  And this, my friends, is my proof!  This is the picture of the demon chicken that haunted my dreams (and life) as a child!

Now, what’s really weird about all this is that my father passed back in 2004, but I still feel (quite often) that he is still with me.  He used to spend a lot of time at my house before he passed, and I often feel his spirit and sometimes even talk to him.  Now, I’m not the all-knowing creator, so I’m not gonna say I know exactly what happens after death, but I do know that in my mind and in my heart, I often feel my dad’s presence.  So…when this stinking chicken shows up, who is a dead ringer for my dad’s twisted pet, I get to thinking. 

Tina is laughing and congratulating me on my ability to “manifest” a chicken.  Now, I’m not saying that’s not what happened…but I am saying if I was setting out to intentionally manifest anything, it would probably look a lot more like Sam Elliott or Hugh Jackman—not the demon spawn of my childhood nightmares!  So where did this chicken come from?  I don’t know.  What I do know is that out of curiosity, I went to a psychic recently who claimed to have spoken with my dead father and my brother.  She hit the proverbial nail on the head for so many things that it was downright spooky, but the one thing that comes to mind for me at a time like this is that she said my father is with me a lot and he told her now that I know he’s there with me, he will give me more signs.  So when I see something strange that brings thoughts of him to mind, I should know he’s there with me.

You got goose bumps yet?  I do!  Did my dad put that demon chicken on the green at the golf course to remind me he’s got my back?  Maybe not…but maybe yes.  One thing for sure, that stinking
chicken has mellowed over the years because he didn’t attack me not even once.  He let me get fairly close and take his picture without a moment’s fuss.  He showed off and strutted a little so I could get a good shot and even crowed once for me.  Then he posed a second time to allow my dear friend, Dani to snap a surprise shot of me on my hands and knees chasing a damn chicken across a golf course to get a picture!  And here’s her proof!

Now, just as a side note, there was one other “fowl” thing that happened to me this weekend.  My youngest grandson lives part of his week at my house and he came over last night with a new little friend, begging to be allowed to add it to our dysfunctional little “farm” family—a duck.  It is the cutest brand new baby duck you’d ever want to see, complete with its soft, downy yellow and black stripes and teeny tiny bill and little webbed feet.  A coincidence?  I think not!  And where the hell was my sign, anyway?  You know, the one that warns “Fowl Weekend Ahead!”  Someone is definitely messing with me…and it’s NOT funny.  (Well, maybe a little.)  I tried to say NO to the duck, but it just wouldn’t come out because I used to have ducks and I loved them.  So the little guy was allowed to stay and when I left the house this morning, the entire family was in the backyard filling a huge blue wading pool for this little teeny tiny duck.  I sure hope they didn’t drown him in all that water!

Okay…back to my question…was it coincidence or was it my dad?  It darn sure coulda been my dad!  That’s just the kind of sick, twisted sense of humor he had…which would explain a lot about his eldest daughter (me).  LOL  I can go months or years with not a single “fowl” thing happening in my world…and within a 24-hour period there are 3 stand-out, odd “fowl” occurrences???   Yep, that chicken was either a manifestation gone BAD wrong, in which case I’m not sure I ever want to try and manifest anything ever again.  Or it was my dad’s sick sense of humor.  The story is mine, but the choice is yours—manifestation or spirit?

This is my story, weird and wonderful, and I’m stickin’ to it.  Hang on tight now, ‘cuz we’re gonna go real, real fast!

Love ya.

Kayce  





UPDATE:  Fowl Weekend Outcome

Well, a couple of days have passed since I originally wrote my blog for this week and I thought maybe you’d like to know whether or not the baby duck my grandson brought home survived the family swim outing, so I wrote this addendum to the blog.  Yes, the little duckie did survive his plunge into the deep end.  Turns out, you apparently can’t drown a duck.  They dropped the little guy in water twice as deep as he is tall and he took off like Secretariat in the Kentucky Derby…and he’s a cute little cuss!
 

Now, you might have noticed that I’m referring to him as a “he”…and that’s because we have no clue what sex he is at this moment, but we are hoping for a “he” since the “hes” are prettier than the “shes” in the Mallard world.  (Yes, I know that’s bad grammar…do you not know me yet?  I butcher at will.)  Anyway, the little duck is a Mallard and was apparently rescued from a larger duck that was intent on killing him.  I can only surmise that the little guy has a short attention span and missed a right turn somewhere along the way, only to find himself left behind and at the mercy of any duck who happened along…either that or mama duck was a psycho bent on offing one of her offspring…because he appears to be perfectly healthy and normal.

So the little duck now has a new home and a new name…Scooter…and a more appropriate name I’ve never seen.  That little sucker scoots across the water like he’s got a motor strapped to his…er…tail feathers.  LOL  Those of you who know me thought I was gonna do it, didn’t you?  Admit it, you did…you thought I was gonna say the “a” word…but I didn’t.  Aren’t ya proud?

Anyway, back to Scooter.  He’s become the darling of the family and I suspect we are going to end up with an insanely spoiled duck when this is all said and done.  My son’s girlfriend has gone out and purchased toys for Scooter…little yellow plastic duck friends to play with in the pool and a little stuffed yellow duckie to sleep with. 

 

 

 

  

Now, I thought perhaps my son would be the one level head in all of this, but I realized that was a pipedream when I stepped out the back door one evening to find my son sitting in a lawn chair with a flyswatter, killing flies and flipping them into the pool to feed Scooter.  Nope, not kidding…here’s the picture to prove it!  The little black spot is Scooter…the yellow spots are all his little yellow duckie friends.  Yes, he’s a very popular duck.  Scooter is now trained to lunge toward the flyswatter each time it slaps the side of the pool.  We might have to hide the flyswatter when Scooter grows up!  Hmmm…maybe we can design a wing attachment for the fly swatter and train Scooter to bring home his own bacon…uh…flies.

Well, that’s the update on my fowl weekend and Scooter.  Hope you enjoyed it.  That’s my story, wild and wacky, and I’m stickin’ to it.  Hold on tight now ‘cuz we’re gonna go real, real fast!

Love ya,
 

Kayce