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As we have been cruising through April and May, there has
been plenty of baby ducks on the canal, all really tiny and fluffy with tons of
cute factor. We have also noticed there are good momma ducks and some rather
careless ones. We have even seen a few poppa ducks taking an active role in
rearing the young.
The good momma ducks herd their little ones together, always
circling around them keeping a close eye on them, never letting them get too
close to people and generally making sure they are safe. The bad mommas, who
have now been labelled Floozy Mommas because of their blatant disregard of the
babies, especially when there is bread on offer, ignore their babies, let them
swim away and as we witnessed one day,
let the gulls swoop down and carry them away for lunch.
In Worcester, we were tied up and had completed a turn
around and were already to receive new guests, when Hanna got on the boats
looking really upset. When questioned, it turned out she had been trying to
help a baby duckling back to its mum, as a group of male ducks had been
attacking it.
The floozy momma duck was on the opposite side of the canal
and was completely ignoring the plight of her off spring in favour of bread.
We all went out to see this duckling, who was sooooooo small
and cute, and still miles away from his mum and still being bullied by the male
ducks. He was getting tired swimming around and around and his mum was still
ignoring him, so we scooped him up and placed him on the fins at the back of
the boat to rest awhile, but he was a bit of a plonker and could not see when
he was on a good a good deal, or maybe it was some primal instinct to get back
to his momma, no matter how bad she is, and kept insisting on jumping back in
the water and trying to swim away, but he had no sense of direction and kept
swimming round in circles and getting nowhere fast, hence the very quick
decision that he should be called Dizzy.
Trying to be practical and sensible, we all went inside and
left him to it, survival of the fittest and all that, but a few minutes later
we heard Brigitta shouting “Hannah quick!! Help! Debs!” we dashed outside to
see Brigitta desperately trying to push the boats away from the edge as Dizzy
swam down between them to a very squashed future. Scooping him up again and
saving him from himself, we decided that putting him back in the canal would be
tantamount to murder at this point and no-one wanted that on their conscience,
but exactly what do you do with a baby duck that hasn’t got the sense to look
after himself?
So, pulling on our very limited wildlife knowledge we
decided he needed a bed with some grass and water. Raiding the kitchen we found
a large Tupperware tub, and Debs went off in search of grass, (if you have ever
been to the concrete desert that is Diglis Basin you will know this is no easy
task) holding him in cupped hands he was shaking so much, poor thing was
terrified, but then if you found yourself suddenly scooped away from everything
you had ever known and adopted by four very over enthusiastic giant humans, you
would be terrified too!
“Can we keep him? Can we keep him?” was the main question
asked, before where will he live? What does he eat? Exactly how do you look
after a baby duck? There were grand plans of building a nest box on the roof,
training him to follow the boats and trying to work out how to dig for worms.
But, as in all emergencies, the ultimate solution was to
call my mum.
Apart from the globally recognised truth that Mums know
everything, I know my Mum had raised a gosling called Dodo when I was little
(but that’s another story for another day) so on the phone, “Hi mum how are
you? Good good, errrmmmm what do we feed a duckling because we seem to have
adopted one!” “Oh yeah, and can he be
toilet trained?”
So, just in case you were wondering, or ever find yourself
in a similar situation; ducklings eat grubs and worms, or you can go to the pet
shop and get special food, do NOT feed them scrambled egg and milk, they will
get diarrhoea (and it seems slightly cannibalistic to me) and the thing that
was repeated several times, “don’t expect him to live very long, he’s a wild
animal”
With this in mind, and after the initial excitement had died
down we looked at Dizzy, shaking and shivering in his bed of freshly picked
grass and decided that the best thing would be to try really hard to reunite
him with his momma- even if she is a floozy.
So Debs and Brigitta headed off with Dizzy in his box to try
and reunite him with his family.
Now both Debs and Brigitta swear blind that they found his
momma and they swam away into to sunset together, but occasionally at night
there is random quacking under my bed, there is definitely one duck that looks
more familiar than the others and I do get through heck of a lot of bread......
