New pets

Saturday evening, nature gifted us with a pair of new pets. We were calmly sitting inside enjoying our evening, when Curt's dad noticed that there were two ducks waddling through our backyard. At first we thought they would just pass on through, but they actually hung out for quite a while. Then, we noticed that the male had a pretty distinctive limp, poor guy. His ever faithful female companion was sticking with him and they were just so darn cute. So I grabbed the stale heel of one of my homemade loaves of bread and snuck out on the back porch to give these adorable ducks a tasty treat.

They ate what might be their fanciest meal ever, stuck around for a bit and then they flew off. What fun, we thought. Then we moved on and forgot about them.

Until Sunday night. Around the exact same time in the evening, Curt called to me, "Honey, the ducks are back!" I ran out to see that they had indeed graced our yard again and were waddling back to the exact spot where I fed them the night before. Good thing we had a stale hotdog bun just waiting to be served for dinner. Same drill.... they ate, chilled out with full bellies, then disappeared.

I vaguely remember hearing my father-in-law tell Addie on Saturday that if we fed them they might return... Hmmm... Should have paid more attention to my good old FIL. You guessed it, last night they were back again. Crap, I'm running out of old bread! I prematurely cut off the heel of another one of my homemade loaves and this time I took Addie along with me for what is quickly becoming a nightly feeding. She loved it and just as before, the ducks did too.

Perhaps they will show up for dinner this evening or maybe they will move on. Either way, I'd better come up with some dining alternatives for these little suckers. I mean, I know my bread is awesome, but it's a little high end for some cute ducks who are well on their way to becoming semi-permanent family pets. But, I really can't complain. What better pets could I ask for? They only need to be fed once a day, they eat and then leave so I don't have to worry about picking up poop, they have a sweet and grateful demeanor, and best of all, they make my girl so very happy. I wish I could say the same for our cat.

Update: Just did a little quick Google research and learned that it is horrible to feed ducks human food, especially bread! Oh NO!!! Until the male looks like he's getting over his limp, we will switch to thawed peas and cheerios. Once he's better, we'll have to stop and let them get back to their normal diet. Wow--glad I checked on that. Thank you, Google!