Well, life seems to be on the up and up. My car will be repaired soon (courtesy of Subaru) and the vacuum cleaner and washing machine have come back home! So all looks well and all the ducklings are still alive.
A word about Ducks......
We started out with 6 ducks and by the end of 2006 - this number had grown to 84! Rather a few too many. So we decided some had to go and we selected 40 (mostly the ugly muscovys) and took them off to the De Deur Auction. We couldn't find a box big enough so popped them through the back window of the bakkie. Off went Brian and Johan to turn us into commercial farmers! They were inundated by Chinese restauraneurs who even left their contact details for future duck selling sessions. I had a twinge of conscience for about a day - imagining my lovely ducks who had had such a happy home now stuck in freezers but 84 was getting a bit out of hand!
Well, after such a population explosion last year we expected another one this year. The ducks definitely did their part but a sneaky little dog called Sally developed a taste for baby ducklings and hardly any of them survived! Very irritating and very sad, ducklings are the cutest little birds.
So now we have put up a fence around the duck pond and the remaining babies all seem to be doing well. Apart from one. We noticed that a particularly stupid mother duck had lost one of her babies so we went in to look for it. It was sitting on the side of the pond, looking depressed. When the mother approached (after we picked it up to make it cheep!) we placed it in the water - it could only swim in circles, a leg was damaged. Johan quickly had to strip off his shoes and socks and wade in because it was about to drown - so we had to rescue it!
Well, we made it a little nest so that it could be concealed so that the other big ducks didn't peck it and walked away feeling that operation duck rescue was accomplished and planned tp check on it the next morning. As we closed the gate Taffy (fox terrier who had watched the proceedings with great interest) dropped the duckling on the grass in front of us - she must have wondered why we were leaving it behind after all our ministrations and decided to bring it with us! Dead of course. She hadn't bitten it or anything just carried it but obviously some damage had been done - or it died of fright!
The peacock babies are all doing well - there are 4 teenagers and one baby - the teenagers are all starting to get their little stand-up feathers on their heads. I was most concerned about our peacock - his tail feather were falling out and those that stayed in seemed to lose the feathery bit so he is walking around with long white stalks trailing behind him. We considered dousing him with lice powder, taking him to the vet but I have subsequently discovered that this is a natural process and that peacocks lose their tails every year - seems a lot of effort to grow them that long again! http://www.boxes.com/ctail.htm
Yippeee, today is Friday and there is a carriage driving competition on Sunday - obstacles. We always get beaten by a small welsh mountain pony called Jop Granada who is very fast and nippy - and it is our lifes ambition to beat him! Womble rocks!
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