Quack on a Cracker!

So for the last few years, we've had a pair of  mallard ducks that take up residence at our park when the ice rink melts into a pond.  Cute.  This spring we've been graced by the presence of the male duck waddling around on our front lawn in the mornings.  Really cute.  The "pond" is on the other side of the park- down the block from us- so he's been wandering a bit of a ways but the boys have enjoyed seeing him in the morning.

And then today we realized why he has been visiting us all the way down the block.  While eating dinner Jon noticed this out of our dining room window, approximately four feet from the side of our house...

 

 

 

In case you're not sure what that is, it is the mother duck sitting on a nest.  Of eggs we presume.  Eggs that will hatch into baby ducks.  Instead of sighing a collective "Awwww!!" and marveling at the incredible opportunity our boys will have to watch this mother incubate, hatch, and raise her ducklings, Jon and I instead let out a collective "Oooooh shit!"  Why?

 

 

This is why... 

Again, let me be just a little more clear...

That is our dog.  Rigby.  He's a lean, mean, hunting machine, with two centuries of innate hunting bred into his very being.  He has superior genes, with well over 250 birds to his name.  While he prefers to hunt ducks from the chilly comfort of daddy's duck boat, he is really not that picky.  He'd be more than happy to hunt one from the warm and cozy comfort of his dining room.  And he'd be even happier to bag a dozen of the suckers in one fell swoop- even if they are all babies!  Oh sheesh!

So Jon spent the evening constructing a dog proof but not duck proof fence around this poor mama duck so that she can come and go as she wants but Rigby cannot get to her.  Of course Rigby, being the fine specimen of a versatile hunting dog that he is, managed to find her through the fence from the back yard- so now Jon's gotta construct a fence in front of the fence back there too so he can't taunt her for the next however many weeks it takes to hatch and raise ducklings.  Even despite the fences, we now have to put our damn dog on a leash every time we leave our house so that we don't have a repeat of the baby bunny mauling incident we had last week.  I would also prefer not to have a repeat of  the mama bunny hopping through our yard in search of said baby bunny incident, which was actually worse than the original incident itself!  It's going to be a loooong spring.

Here's to hoping that just this once, our skilled pup misses the bird!