The Great Duck Exodus, Part One: Duck Danger!

I am not sure if this is May and her mate, or another couple home shopping. All Ducks look alike to me.

Back in February we were visited by a male and female Mallard duck. I would take our dog out in the morning and they were swimming in our pool. I would do whatever I could to scare them off and discourage them from coming back. Then several weeks later, by accident, we noticed that the female was nesting in one of the bushes by our pool. We put scare eye bird chaser balls in the pool, hung them on the fence, and I even hung one over her nest, but she stayed and laid her eggs.

May on her nest.

You can see one of May's eggs on the left while she was off getting food.

Every morning for about a month, May, the name I gave her, would leave for about an hour in the morning, and another hour in the evening just before dark, but would always come back and sit on the nest. We had hopes she would abandon the nest because we were not looking forward to our pool being invaded by ducks, and all the mess and bacteria that would entail. But, they are Federally protected, so we let her be. Then on April 4th, when May left the nest in the morning, I looked in the nest and saw the first duckling. By the next morning I saw six ducklings and on April 6th the madness began.

When May was off the nest this morning I saw that the ducklings were hatching!

Six so far!

I went to take the dog out in the morning and everything was calm. After I went back into the house I could hear May quacking like a crazy duck, and I went to look outside and one of the ducklings had fallen out of the nest into the pool. May was quacking and the duckling was chirping while swimming back and forth in front of the nest. There was no way it could get out of the pool. I went into panic mode trying to figure out how to get the duckling out of the pool, while May was trying to keep the rest of the ducklings in the nest.

I went to the garage and took the lid off of a plastic storage tub, grabbed an old beach towel, 2 chip clips and a pair of my husbands sandals. I clipped the towel to one end of the tub lid, put the lid in the water by the nest bush, pulled the other end of the towel up on the side of the pool to make a ramp, and put the sandals on the end to hold it in place. After several hectic minutes the duckling figured out that it could get on the lid and walk up the towel out of the pool and went into the bush and into the nest. Stressful!!!!

This was the first ramp that saved the first duckling that fell in the water.

At that point, May took her, what looked to be twelve, ducklings out of the bush nest and into the landscaping behind the pool. Sounds easy enough, right?  As May was leaving the nest all but two of the ducklings followed. The last two were stuck in the nest. One looked as if it may have been newly hatched. It kept rolling on its back and just couldn't get out of the nest. I used the pool skimmer to try to help it out. May decided to camp out with the kids in the landscaping by a tree. Crisis solved for now!

May took the kids to "safer" ground. Or did she?

I went to the store and bought two foam kid's kick boards and some tarp to make a new ramp for the next time the ducklings might get stuck in the pool. I was wrong to think that was the only trouble they could get into. When my husband came home from work that evening we went back to the area May and her babies were located, and heard chirping in an area away from May. We found one of the ducklings had fallen in between the landscaping retaining fence and the privacy fence. This is a maybe 12 inch deep by 4 inch wide gap. So, off I went to get some gloves to get the duckling out and back to Mom. At this point I realized this was going to be a lot more work than I had bargained for, and that my yard and pool was too hazardous of a place for these ducks.

I bought two kid's kick boards and used duct tape to hold the ends together. They have little bungee loops on the top that I used to pin the tarp to the boards with safety pins. Then I put the boards in the water and was able to bend them at the tape edges and put one end on the edge of the pool. I put a brick on the end of the tarp to hold it in place. I put a wet towel on top of the tarp to give the ducklings traction and the weight kept it from floating around as much. I left the plastic on the boards so that when this nightmare was over I could use them for my Grandkids.

The finished product!

This is the gap in the fence with the duck in it.

The next morning was the breaking point. I took the dog out in the morning at around 8 am and May was once again quacking like a panicked Mom. I walked back to the area where she was located and heard chirping in the fence. Off I went to get the gloves and pulled the duckling out of the fence gap. I went into the house and thought that was the end of the craziness. WRONG!!!!

This video is of May trying to find the duckling in the fence. Her quacking is what drew me to come outside to see what was wrong. You can hear the baby chirping.

A few minutes later I looked out to see the whole duck family, May and her now fourteen ducklings, swimming in the pool, and they had no way to get out. May kept getting out of the pool onto the rocky edge where it was impossible for the duckling to get out themselves. She wouldn't take them to the ramp on the other side of the pool, so I moved the ramp to the rocks. This went on for an hour. I thought maybe it was the color of the towel I put on the tarp for the ducks to get traction, so I took the towel off. Finally, May got two ducklings to jump up out of the pool because they were able to jump on their brothers and sisters heads to get out. So, May got out of the pool to stay with them, and I used the skimmer to direct the ducklings to the ramp. All but three got out, and the last three kept sliding down the wet tarp on the ramp. I put the towel back on the tarp and got the last three out. This was turning into a full time job!

I needed to get these ducks out of my yard!! I called Texas Wildlife and they gave me the number of some person that rescues animals. No help at all! She gave me a few options; leave them in the yard (not an option), take them to the creek at the end of my street, or take the ducklings to her with a $100 donation. Looks like I am going to take them to the creek. Easier said than done!

Stay tuned for The Great Duck Exodus, Part Two: Follow the Leader!