Eat or be eaten

When I come home they race towards me – hoping I will feed them. Every morning they are already waiting – again, hoping I will feed them. On the whole, that is pretty much what our relationship is about: food.

I am talking about our ducklings. The small pond in our garden is the home of a duck family. As common with ducks, daddy is nowhere to be seen after the surprisingly violent act of mating, so our duck is a single mom. When the eggs hatched about seven weeks ago, there were thirteen little ones. However, evolution soon took its toll and the ducklings started to disappear one by one. Three were found dead, but most were taken by crows and other predators. Since the cuteness of ducklings cannot be overestimated, we of course got attached and are doing our best to defy the natural course of events. Survival of the fittest, get lost!

We investigated what ducks are supposed to eat. Bread apparently is too salty, so we started feeding them cereal. They do not like raisins, so each portion is carefully sifted to take them out. We don’t blame them, we don’t like raisins either. It turns out they also eat snails – for them it is gourmet food. You could almost consider them useful garden helpers, were it not that they also took a liking to our carefully planted salad. They seem to grow well on our diet, supplemented with the abundance of weeds in our garden. We even covered the pond with a safety net, to prevent attacks from above.

Despite our efforts, we are down to two ducks: Duck Snow and Catherine Fortescue the Second. And no, these names were not my idea – I went for the obvious ones like Spots and Shorty, but these ducklings did not make it. So we are stuck with the crazy names my hubby came up with. Duck Snow is the proverbial ugly duckling revealing his bastard father’s influence – hence the Game of Thrones reference. Catherine is indeed a girl for all we can tell now and often misses out with feeding as her big brother is always faster.

Recently, they started to grow proper feathers that replace the down. But it will still be some time before they are fully grown and able to fly. We keep feeding and try to protect them, but I hold my breath. Are they going to make it?

Johanna Gröne (29, German) studied Health Care, Ethics & Policy at TilburgU. She works for a health insurance company and is a member of the Gemeenteraad (Tilburgs local council).

_Advertentie.