"Have you seen a duck?"

Every morning, Andrew lets the ducks out of their hoop house and feeds the cats. Two hours later, when I wake, I let the chickens out. If he lets the chickens out at the same time as the ducks, the chickens all rush over to where the cats are and eat their food up, so this way works well and the cats get to eat in peace.

This morning went as usual, I go out to let the chickens out and behind me is a duck. Wait a minute! A duck??  Where's the other duck? That never happens, seeing one duck without the other nearby. Something had to be wrong!  I walk around looking for signs of a duck or duck feathers. I assume maybe an animal has gotten an early lunch or perhaps a car hit it? Looking up and down the road, no signs of feathers or a dreaded bloody spot. I walked all around the property and nothing. How I wished the one lone duck could talk and tell me where the other one was.

I contemplated going across the street to the neighbors but how weird would that conversation be? "Excuse me, but I've lost a duck. Have you seen it?" Besides, they have two pitbulls that bark really loudly whenever they see me walking around the front yard and I'm not willing to risk my butt being bitten. Andrew isn't home either, so I can't send him over there instead. Better his butt than mine! No, he has a nice butt, I'd have to kiss it and make it better.

Ahem!!  Anyway!

A couple hours have passed and I've pretty much accepted that Quackers is gone. (the girls have informed me that Cheese is the lone duck and Quackers is the one missing)  We're all eating lunch when there comes a knock at the front door. It's the neighbor.

"Hi! What can I do for ya?" says I.

"We found 2 ducks, are they yours?" he asks.

"I happen to be missing one!"

"I got two of them in our dog kennel right now," he says.

"Well, the other one must have gone missing too! I'll be right over!" I say.

Ain't it the darnedest thing?! The other duck crossed the road to join his buddy! Quackers is hurt-- he has a bloody wing. I don't know if one of his dogs bit him or not, I'm just glad they're OK. He mentioned the ducks charged his dogs and they ran away from them. I know for a fact that the ducks do charge and my own dog stays away from the ducks, so I believe him, but I also know two dogs can certainly tag-team a duck and it's possible one of the dogs got a bite in and he didn't see it or doesn't want to tell me. He said he had 18 chickens once and one of his dogs killed every single one of them one day, so the possibility is there.  Whatever, Cheese and Quackers are home again!

I brought them back home and tried to examine Quacker's wing, but who am I kidding? I don't know what I'm looking for under all those feathers.  All I could see was a spot of blood on his wing and when I tried to look underneath, there was a bald spot, but no wound. I let them loose in the pool and they hurriedly waddled out and into the garden area where they stayed for the rest of the day.

Now I wonder if I need to put up the fencing around the coop and duck house? We bought the materials a few months ago, even cemented in the fence posts for the gate door and pounded in a few t-bars, but that's where I stopped. I hate to fence them in, I love having them free-ranging around the yard. Have the ducks learned their lesson and will they stay in the back from now on? They say ducks are smart, have they learned anything from today's events? Maybe I'll pound in the rest of the t-bars before the ground freezes and then if something else happens that shows me they haven't learned their lesson, I'll put up the fencing.