The seven baby ducks currently calling Volunteer Park’s koi pond home will soon have a new address. According to a park employee working at the pond on Monday, the mother duck and her ducklings — yes, good news, there are still seven — will soon be transported to the Arboretum to begin a new life on the shores of Lake Washington. Apparently, the koi pond and the reservoir don’t make the best place to raise a quickly growing duck family. If you get over there in time to see the ducks before they’re moved, you’ll note the cage set up inside the pond enclosure so the family has time to get used to the idea of the thing before they’re coaxed inside for the ride down the hill.
And when can we eat them? Urban farming, you know. Classic.
And save the feathers for a pillow, oh yes. Granny did that, urban farming again, very green, very sustainable.
Story ….. my grandmother did indeed pluck the geese and ducks at slaughter for pillows. Saved the down for years and then, voila, nifty pillows. Except, one pillow had a dried duck head in it. How or why, grand kids never knew, but it was a source of great conjecture and fascination. The Duckhead Pillow. Ah, family stories.
Very rural, you know.
Rural indeed. My grandmother, in rural Minnesota, plucked all the geese and used the feathers for pillows. My entire family still uses those pillows. And my mother still has a bag full of extra goose feathers that my grandmother had saved and she’ll occasionally refill the pillows to fluff them up.
Maybe if geese weren’t so prone to biting people we’d have urban geese-farming, too? ;) Sustainable indeed!
My wife and I have been watching the ducklings for the past week and a half. I had the impression that mallards mated for life, so I could not escape the personal triggering that this was a heroic single mom, whose husband must have met some tragic end, and now she was determined to protect her nine vulnerable babies. Oh how we project our own stories upon the dramas of life. Nine darling ducklings there continued to be, that is until last night (July 26th), when it seemed that there were only eight remaining – it was at dusk so perhaps our summation was hindered by the failing light. Today (July 27th) we returned to the ponds yet again, knowing that nature can be cruel (so many potential predators: falcons, raccoons, rats, roaming cats, and god knows what else lurks around Volunteer Park at night), and mother mallard was present, nesting amongst the water flora, but she would not budge. Were the little ones beneath her? It did not seem so, her body seemed so compact and she was brining so much attention to her still form, calling out, searching as it seemed, for her companion brood. Eventually she did arise and moved away from the vacant spot to swim about, searching one corner of the pond and then the other, quacking and summoning with no little ones to hear her call. After a few minutes she took flight, landing in the large water reservoir. The outline of her form was dark against the brilliance of the reflecting sunset, almost invisible to the eye, yet her desperate call, constant and filled with heartache, carried disturbingly well on the evening breeze. Does anyone out there know what has actually happened to her young, how many were presumably collected by the Park Service, and what, if any, plans they have for reuniting the young with their melancholic mother?