Learning a Hard Lesson

Sometimes lessons are learned because of our own sheer ignorance. Sometimes it's because of a poor lack of judgement or just being lazy. Or maybe because there are too many balls in the air (as in juggling).

Well, we had a hard lesson come almost a couple of weeks ago in the form of losing some of our waterfowl. Back on the morning of October 11th Tom came running in the house and frantically called out that Lenny was gone...

WHAT?!

I jumped into action ran outside only to find that Lenny - our beloved goose - was truly gone. We did see a smallish pile of feathers outside of the duck pen. However, nothing else was amiss with the fence or within the pen. Immediately we had to count the ducks to see if any of them were missing. Thankfully all eight were still there.

Okay, so our buddy Lenny was gone...and not to minimize that tragedy, we did have the rest of the flock to tend to. Especially his little buddy Shelly. I could tell that he was searching for his pal which made me feel so sad for him. However, we were thankful at the same time to still have the ducks.

What happened a couple of days later was devastating. Saturday morning we went out to start on the morning chores and on the weekends the waterfowl are generally my responsibility. I made my way out to the pen and only saw TWO of the ducks and one of them outside of the corrale - this is highly unusual and I know with Lenny gone things have been a little different, but not this different.

OH NOOOOOOO!!!! After a quick search to see if maybe the others were in the shelters...nothing. The two that were in the corrale ran out so quickly that I couldn't tell who was left.

Three of the ducks were still with us. THREE!

After alerting Tom to the situation his first question was whether or not Shelly was one of the three. Sadly, he was not - we lost the originals. The two that started this whole waterfowl thing we have going on. Realizing that we still had to move on, I tried to get the three ducks fed, but they were not interested. In fact, all they wanted to do was play in the pink pool. So I let them do their thing and adjust to life as a trio.

We continued on our morning and made sure that the three were all settled in. Later in the morning we made our way to have coffee and after a short while we returned home. I went to check on the kids and was surprised to see that there were four ducks.

Hoping that it would be Shelly I went and took a closer look, but it was not. It was another female which is fine, but having Shelly back would have been the best gift. Well, this little one must have been hiding in the brush between our property and the neighbor. Tom had to walk to see if maybe any others might have been still in hiding. There were none. So we have 3 little ladies and Gordon.

The Fab Four - from top to bottom: Gladys, Bernadette, Phyllis and Gordon

It has taken me almost all week to settle into this new normal and we are very protective of these little goof balls. They are extremely resilient and it only took a couple of days before Bernadette was feeling social and started hanging with the other three. Her partner was taken and she was quiet the first day and not eating much. I was afraid that she wouldn't survive the night as I am sure that she was attacked and somehow was able to get away. Which is what probably happened to the one that was hiding. They both were quite dirty and moving a little slow.

They are all doing well now and we are thankful for the 4 that we have left. We will definitely let them breed when the time comes. We are both missing the whole lot of them though, but hey there are still four and again, we are thankful! This past weekend they started becoming more vocal and their goofy little personalities were coming out again.

What took our waterfowl? Well, there wasn't anything wrong with the fence so we are pretty sure it wasn't a raccoon. Besides we haven't seen a raccoon at our house since we had the giant cedar tree taken down. There wasn't any evidence of the ducks being eaten or any blood nearby. I want to say that if it were a coyote that there would be NO ducks left and the fence would be messed up. Tom decided that it had to be an owl. Which I can believe they have perched on the old equipment shed in the past. However, it is hard for me to believe that an owl would take a goose, but we can't think of anything else given the condition of the corrale. Nothing was out of place...not one thing! There was a tidy pile of feathers at one end of the corrale, so whatever got the ducks had a little bit of a struggle.

Now that we are into our second week without the majority of our flock, I am slowly getting past this unfortunate incident and I resolve that nothing will be taken from our farmstead again.

One of the last pics of Lenny taken just a couple of days before his disappearance

Last pic of the hooligans - photo bombing the pea seedlings that were just planted

Our farm will never be the same, but we will be much more vigilant going forward. We do look forward to new possibilities and adding a pair of Embden Geese next spring and letting the Magpie squad breed.

For now, we have the Magpie squad in the yard and back in the chicken tractor with a length of Premier1 netting around their area so that when we are away for short periods of time, they can still be out in the yard foraging and playing in their pool or the sprinkler. At other times, we open up the fence so they can roam around. We always thought that Lenny was their protector and kind of kept an eye out for them. Because of that we are quite protective of them right now. They have adapted fairly quick and they are almost no trouble at all getting them to go back into the tractor at the end of the day or when we are going to be away for an extended period of time.

Even in the midst of tragedy farm life is the best life.