Just ducky! Good things still happen

“Why is there a duckling in your bathtub?”

 It was an innocent question in response to a short video my daughter, Beth, had sent to me.

“The boys found a “random” duck egg “all by itself” at the pond and brought it home. So they put it in the incubator. It actually hatched!!! It is so stinking cute!” That was her reply, and her quotation marks.

That sparks another question. What pond? I decided to skip that for now.

We had a dozen or so ducks when I was growing up.

They were kept in the same small field as the chickens. I hated the chickens and loved the ducks.

This was mainly because the rooster would attack me as often as he could while the ducks would play follow the leader. 

 I loved to hide out in the duck house on sunny summer days and read. This was best done after a fresh bale or two of straw was spread on the floor. While I was enjoying the quiet, several ducks would climb onto my lap and I petted them like they were kittens. Who knew that ducks liked to be cuddled?

The chicken house was nasty. It was hard to breathe in there as the air was extremely foul from the fowl that lived there. The doors and windows were almost always open but the building itself never heard the words “cross ventilation.” At some point the chicken house was demolished and a silo of sorts took its place. That didn’t last long. Both outbuildings are long gone, as is the fence. Now it is just one big cornfield, or whatever they are growing these days.

So far, the grandkids have only the one duck. They also have a couple of chickens, or they did the last time we were down there.

There is a resident hawk that thinks the chickens are treats and has caught several of them. 

 I hope that the duckling lives a long and happy life. It needs to be careful as the kids don’t have a good history of keeping found animals alive.

What they do have is memories of what a good childhood should be. They will remember their childhood like I remember mine. Some of it will be awful, like broken bones from trying to see how close to the edge one can put a chair before it topples over. Other parts will be wonderful. They are allowed to run free as much as possible.

While they are as competent as the next child at video games, they are happiest when they are outside. They can play together or apart. They live in the house where most of the kids on their street congregate. 

They don’t practice social distancing, except for dealing with closed schools, online education, canceled baseball practice and canceled play practice.

They don’t quarantine themselves.. To my knowledge they don’t wear masks or any other protective gear. What they do is refuse to live their lives in fear.

They are counting on ... actually I don’t know what they are counting on to keep them safe. I worry about them.

I think they are staying home a little more than usual, as are we. As much as possible they avoid anyone with obvious symptoms. 

When they are at work Beth and her hubby wear all the protective gear that is necessary. They wash their hands so much that no amount of hand lotion will make their hands soft again. They take all the precautions they can. In the back of their minds they have accepted that the probability of them acquiring the virus is quite high.

While our entire country and a good bit of the world is justifiably afraid of the virus that has caused the pandemic, seeing pictures of a duckling in a bathtub lets me know that good things are still happening on a daily basis.