Poultry Pandemonium

Sooooo - here's the thing about raising fowl of various sorts. They grow.

I know this seems obvious to the uninitiated, but seriously - they GROW. I remember when my own babies were small thinking there were weeks or even days when they seemed to change in front of me, but not like this. This is like, blink and gain five pounds. I thought only I could do that.

The champions in this race to adult birdhood are the ducks. I mean holy cannoli. You get these adorable little balls of fuzz that cheep and cuddle and next thing you know they are a foot tall and their voices are changing. Literally they are expanding as you watch. I do love me some ducks, and we have gotten them many an Easter during the course of raising my kids. Always before, we had to raise them up and then go find a home for them - a friend who lived in the country, or more recently taking them to the LSU lakes. Now? Voila! Home pond advantage.

So in my fondness for ducks in particular, and my newfound enthusiasm for raising fowl in general, I MAY have gone just the TINIEST bit overboard in the procurement of ducklings. We started with two. They were precious, grey with pale yellow chests and multicolored feet, and in an attack of Trekkiness we named them Sulu and James Tiberius Kirk (or JT). About ten days later, we were in the farm store and they had more ducklings, different varieties than we had already gotten. They had the quintessential Easter ducks, yellow puffballs that are white when they get feathers. We decided to get two more, but the yellow ones were already spoken for so we got two really cute ones that were brown with dark facial markings. These four are now enormous. Absolutely enormous. And of course, then, well.....they were just so CUTE. When we went back to get feed there were more yellow ones. So we decided to get two more, only that only left one and I didn't want him to be alone, so we brought home all three. So now we have seven ducks. I am insane.

In a desire to get the ducks into their natural habitat (and out of my garage) as soon as possible, my daughter and I built them a spiffy duckie play yard next to the pond. In a feat of determination and questionable engineering prowess, we even "fenced in" part of the water so they could get in there and swim but still be contained. I was just not up for wading hip deep into the pond to chase them down when it was time to go back in the garage! They loved it. But we cannot leave them outside until they can fly out of harm's way, so they are part of the ridiculously expanded bird operations in my garage.

The "big boys" (Sulu, JT, Scotty and Spock) were kinda mean to the little yellow babies (either Uhura, Data and Jean Luc or Larry, Curly and Mo - we hadn't decided) so we had to separate them. Unfortunately, we were out of containers. This is of course pre-ordained, in accordance with the rules of farming that require that every initial expenditure engenders at least 6 additional expenditures that you didn't think of. So we bought a "chick enclosure" - basically, a set of plasticized panels and little rings to put them together with, which you then set up in a ring to contain up to 15 baby chicks. As I am discovering, 15 baby chicks and 4 rapidly-approaching-adulthood ducks are not comparable quantities of fowl mass.

The ducks are as tall as the enclosure. It is pretty ludicrous, really, to view them as contained at all when they are looking over the top of the thing at you. But here's the thing about large-ish ducks - they are strong. And those adorable webbed feet? They will FIGHT YOU with them. Like, to the death. Not in any sort of mean-spirited way, you understand, they are just not the brightest of birds and they will FREAK OUT.

So today, lovely morning, gotta feed and water the birds because Kate is farm-sitting elsewhere and John is not at home. No problem, takes like 5 minutes to rinse out all the waterers and fill them and dump some food in their feeders and put 2 scoops of bunny food in the bunny feeder and give everyone a little conversation. Hah. I open the garage door and there are 4 maniacal ducks running around, having used brute force to simply pop apart their enclosure in search of greener pastures. Or more water. Or whatever. Duckie masses yearning to breathe free.

So just try and picture this, if you will. If you know me, it will be even funnier. I am not a lithe, graceful, picture of athletic elegance. So here I am, dashing around the garage trying to change direction as quickly as my tiny horde of freaked out ducks in an effort to herd them through a small triangular opening in their enclosure. They, on the other hand, are moving as one, like those schools of fish you see that all magically change direction at the same time, waving their stubby little wings, necks extended, and "quacking" for all they are worth. I had to stop myself from expostulating loudly, something on the order of Steven Tyler's favorite expletive concerning the copulatory habits of waterfowl. I finally herded them into a corner and made a grab for the smaller ones. This is where I discovered about the feet. They are sharp, they wave around a lot, and they are like little jackhammers. Really nasty, poop encrusted jackhammers. So much for my clean shirt.

When I finally contained them, I was a mess. Had to go and change before going in to work, making me late, and then on the way I was too distracted to look at my dash and ran out of gas. Good thing I love ducks.