Ahh, the post I told you would be so exciting! Here they are; Papoose (foreground) and Turkey-Two-Feathers. I believe it was in 2002 that the school (in Taipei) that I taught kindergarten at decided it'd be a great idea to get chicks and ducks and watch them hatch and grow. I knew it was a bad idea (the kids' parents would be way too squirrelly to allow fowl in the school), but no one listened to me. I walked into the school one morning to be greeted by 2 newly hatched chicks and 2 not yet hatched ducklings. Since, of course, no one had planned out where these creatures were going to do their growing up I took the whole lot home with me. The chicks (totally creeped me out, they weren't fluffy and yellow but looked like mini chickens and were all trippy and weird) stayed with me for a few weeks, but the had to go after that. But the ducks...they thought I was their Momma and followed me all over the house and would sleep on my feet. I adored those boys. So much so that they had their own room in my house and were given only bottled water for the first 5 months of their lives.
Napping on a magazine.
I have pictures of their teenage gangly growing up months, but can't find them. This is once they were all big and strong and I felt (brave enough) they were big enough to live outside on my patio. They had the run of the patio while I was home, but I put them in separate cages while I was at work or during the night (I lived on the 5th floor and worried they'd get into monkey business and go over the edge). They'd sleep outside my door together and guard the house (that's what I told myself anyways).
Hard to tell but Odus (my cat) is licking his lips. But make no mistake about it, the ducks took no none sense from him and felt very free and confident in their duckiness to chase Odus around and pull out his fur if he tried any funny business.
The fate of every single plant I had.
Papoose (the quiet, sensitive one) would nest on anything that remotely resembled the shape of a nest. He'd also nest on the drains.
Initially they had free range of the patio and only had a dinghy to play in, but after their poop clogged the drains and flooded my landlady's kitchen right below the patio I made an enclosure for them (can't believe I wasn't evicted for that one).
I felt so bad that this was the best 'dive' they could do. They'd try so hard to dive down and get a good washing (at one point when the dinghy was long gone and they'd graduated to a kiddie pool the pool got a hole and since it was during the heat of summer and I didn't have time that day to go buy a new one I put out cake pans for them to cool off in).
Turkey-Two-Feathers. He was my big brave noisy duck. I used to put a harness on him and take him for walks to the park so he could eat grass and dirt (he'd also chase me around the patio and bite my feet, very cheeky).
They lived in the house for the first 6 months, then had the run of the patio for the next 6, and then I built this enclosure out of a bed frame. I also clipped their wings so they wouldn't be able to fly up to the ledge and fall off. Once they had this sweet pad they were able to spend all their time out of their cages (except at night) and I wasn't having to clean up poop from every square inch of the patio.
Man I loved those ducks!
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