DUCK EGGS

When I was a baby I had a bath toy duck with a pull string attached. When I pulled on the string the duck would say, "Wanna buy a duck?"  I also had a self-propelled bathtub boat.... but that's another story.

Years ago while living in San Jose, a young wild Mallard was attacked by dogs and rescued by neighboring kids. I accepted the poor little bird and nurtured him back to health in our back yard.  We named him Dudley (Moore) and as he feathered out into the beautiful colors of a male Mallard, we thought he should get a mate.... so we asked around and found a small suburban farm which had a pond frequented by water foul of all sorts. The owner said she did put out feed for the birds and was sure she could catch one for us. In just a few minutes she came back with a nice fat female who seemed to enjoy the free meals better 'n flying.  She charged us five dollars for the effort... and to buy more food for the birds! We named Dudley's new partner, Susan (Anton).

Dudley bonded to me and followed me everywhere I went in the back yard or sat next to me when I reclined in the summer sun.  Susan, much older than Dudley, was happy eating and floating around in the inflatable pool we bought for them.... they were, after all, ducks, you know.

Then Susan built herself a nest under the bushes against our back fence and started laying eggs! So I figured that duck's eggs must be something like chicken's eggs so I tried one for breakfast. It was larger, richer and great!.... much better than chickens eggs!

This was when it was considered unhealthy to eat eggs.... although the whites were OK, so Betty didn't eat them, but I sure did!  One a day was just right... but then I began to feel guilty eating all of Susan's pre-babys... so I stopped stealing them and in no time she had a nest full and was sitting virtually full time. She was a very dutiful mother.

Well, nature took its course, as they say and we had eleven little ducklings following their mother all around the yard. In the meantime Dudley had changed his attitude toward everyone everything... and instead of following me, would attack me trying to bite me with his 'tongue depressor' lips ....and worse, he'd try his darnedest to kill the defenseless ducklings... and he succeeded in killing two despite the violent and valiant attempts by Susan to protect them.

I finally jailed Dudley in our side yard so he couldn't kill his family before they were large enough to defend themselves.  Fall was coming and the instinct to migrate induced Dudley to teach himself to fly.  Over the nest week or so there were feeble attempts across the back yard, but later he was making it over the fence into the neighbor's yard and then over our roof into the front yard where he would crash and I'd pick him up and put him back in the back yard. At this point, Susan, watching him disappear over the house would let out loud quacking fusses letting us know that Dudley had flown over the house yet again!

Then the day came when responding to Susan's quacking, I rushed to the front yard to see Dudley skim across the lawn, swoop across the street, gaining altitude, clearing the two story across the street and upward until he disappeared high in the sky.

Guess that Susan was really attached to the guy.... but she was far too heavy to fly! So.... she went on a diet! She stopped eating and started flexing her wings testing for lift. It took too long for her to catch up with Dudley, but she skinny-ed down and regained her ability to fly.  In a much more professional manner she finally flew away out of our yard without quacking goodby and leaving her nine juvenile ducklings behind.

The city water department was situated on the edge of a percolation pond which had been allowed to go natural with all sorts of bushes, water plants, reeds and rushes. It was a bird sanctuary, so we thought that would be a perfect place to take our very tame ducklings before they'd get too attached to us. So we carted them in a large cardboard box to the pond's edge and let them out. They were very timid at first and clustered tightly together as they looked at all of the various water foul paddling about.  But they did eventually enter the water.  We came back the next day, they saw us and swam over to us and we made over them a bit.  The day after that, they were clustered a bit farther out in the pond and looked our way but didn't paddle over..... after that, they looked no more and were swimming about just like the other birds.

But! Duck eggs really are the greatest!