The Story of Fred and Ethel

Fred and Ethel have been visiting us for the last few years during the early summer months. They would stop by for a brief swim in our pool and fly on to their next destination. Each year the visits seemed a little longer.

This year they seemed to hang around a lot more and were never scared off my fierce little Japanese Chin dogs.

One day we came home and Fred was going for a swim by himself with Ethel nowhere to be seen. After awhile Ethel emerged from a cluster of jasmine vines beside our pool. My husband, checked and sure enough there was a nest with two eggs. We thought "oh no, we are going to have all these ducks in our pool". But we also felt the excited anticipation of being Duck Grandparents. We were never able to have kids so we never understood this conglomeration of emotions.

Thanks to the internet we quickly did our research and discovered that ducks lay an egg a day until they are finished laying. Sure enough each day our egg check confirmed a new egg. We also learned that ducks lay an average of 8 to 12 eggs. Sure enough, Ethel layed an even dozen.

As we learned from our research, after they lay the last egg they spend most of their time sitting on the eggs. What we didn't learn was that the fathers don't stick around all the time. Fred is seldom around now although, he does make the occasional visit. My husband accuses him of spending all of his time on the golf course.

Now we are in the waiting mode. We didn't keep good grandparent records, but we think that they will hatch around Memorial Day. We are not sure what we will do with 12 little ducklings but we do think that Fred and Ethel chose us for a reason. I am not sure how they know that we would never hurt them and that we will do everything possible so that the dozen duckling have a chance of survival, but they do. We take it as a compliment. A compliment from a duck is still a compliment.