About two months ago Julia and I started noticing two ducks that had conveniently mistaken our pool for a pond. I have always wanted our pool to get more use, but this was not the direction that I was thinking. For fear of digested duck food in and around the pool, I would make my way out to the pool screaming words I’m sure the ducks did not understand to try to get them to find another home. Generally it worked, but I found that as time moved on the ducks became less and less afraid of my rants.
I then resorted to the fear of physical abuse by grabbing the pool net and splashing it in the water. This, too, worked for a while but I eventually had to use a combination of the two to free the pool of its new inhabitants. After a couple of weeks I noticed that there was only one duck left and I felt pretty proud of the fact that I had scared the male away.
Little did I know at the time, but it seems that my two new friends had turned my back yard into a love den. It seems that Mr. Duck had gotten rather friendly with Miss Duck and done what many men have done over the years and flew the coup. I didn’t put all of this together until I was doing some replanting of flowers in one of the planters that we had built into our water feature (that’s what they call a waterfall out here.) My eyes about popped out when I saw a couple of eggs sitting in the bottom of another planter.
I was now in crisis mode. This was no longer a situation of scaring away an unwanted duck. All of a sudden, I was either going to become a home wrecker or a duck egg murderer. Neither of these sat well with either of us so Julia started calling around town to see what our options were. We were told everything from it was against the law to do anything to the eggs all the way to grab the eggs when the mother was gone and turn them into scrambled eggs if we want.
Our problem had grown bigger as the days went by as we were now grandparents of so many eggs that I couldn’t count all of them. If you think that having two ducks soiling the pool was a problem, think about who knows how many more. We were beside ourselves. It’s not like we are super animal lovers, especially of the wild variety, but at the same time it just didn’t seem right to tamper with the eggs.
Julia was lucky enough to find a rescue group that would come to the house after the eggs were hatched and take the ducks to a more suitable environment. We waited and waited, but no baby ducks. That was until early Saturday morning when Julia awoke to the sound of multiple peeps and not the kind you find in your Easter basket. She was able to make it to the window and see several newborn ducks literally roll down the waterfall and into the pool.
Much like Christmas morning we scampered outside to see our new presents. There were nine ducklings following their mother around as if they were tied together on a string. All of a sudden they were more than eggs. New life had joined us on the Great Lake Churan. They were cute and fuzzy and Jason wanted to keep one.
During Julia’s conversations with the rescue group we were told that once the ducklings made it into the pool, they would have trouble getting out. As a result, we needed to give them an escape strategy. Julia grabbed one of the screens from our windows and all of a sudden the escape plan was in place. However, the ducks didn’t quite get the memo and we had to do a modified cattle drive to get them out of the pool. That worked once, but it seems that ducks are not right up there with dolphins in the intelligence category. Within minutes the ducks were back in the pool and had no idea how to get out.
The ducklings were getting a little more adapted to their surroundings and the majority eventually were soon able to get out on their own. Ironically, Jason came to the rescue for the rest with the same pool net that I had used just a month earlier to try to scare the ducks away.
Then the rescue guy called and said he was on his way over. Julia said his name was Scooter and I was expecting some young kid in dreds showing up. Instead, we got a 60+ year old volunteer. After several attempts and Jason and I helping trap the ducks in the water feature, the mother was captured and soon the babies. They were quickly placed in cages and were off to their new home a few miles away.
Then it hit me, I missed them. We only had them for a few hours, but they were cute and I understood why Jason wanted to keep one. I think the miracle of life grabbed me a bit. Sometimes we just take for granted how everything works. I have a couple of ducks in my back yard in February and in April I have a boatload of baby ducks.
I refuse to believe that we are an accident. There is nothing that the scientists tell me that can allow for the fact that all of this all happened in one place. Big bang or not, I still think that God had something to do with all of the pieces fitting into the puzzle.
We all have the opportunity to believe what we want and I guess I’m a hybrid kind of guy. The bible version is a nice simple way of describing what happened. Yet, you can no longer deny the science and the fact that dinosaurs were here 30,000,000 years ago. But at the same time, there is no reason to believe that God didn’t just want it to play out this way. No reason to believe that he didn’t help push the first few cells together to make life. No reason to believe that he didn’t whisper into the ear of that first fish that decided to take a breath on dry land. In the end, it all worked and I refuse to believe that there wasn’t a plan to make life the beautiful thing that it is.
By the way, I got some good news last week in addition to the good news from the latest blood work. Not only is my light chain reading normal, but there is a chance, however small, that I could actually get off chemo at some time in the future. Even though the activity is so low it really doesn’t measure, Dr. Mikhael is of the belief that there is some of that nastiness still going on, which is only logical. If the current cocktail continues to work and minimizes what is there even more, there is some chance that the multiple myeloma might go dormant for a period. Again, not a cure, but a hope for freedom from chemo for a while. In the meantime, I’m enjoying life to the max, even though I seemed to have lost my new duck buddies.
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