Feeding the Ducks

Lily and I have been going for a lot of walks lately, usually first thing in the morning. As soon as she wakes up, I get her bottle ready before I even get her out of bed. She goes straight into the jogger, I hand her the bottle, and we're off. We'll see how long I can keep this early-morning activity stuff going. If you don't know me very well, you may be surprised to learn that I am absolutely NOT a morning person, and early-morning workouts are not my cup of tea. Those of you who do know me well have probably fainted at the shock of me going for a walk before I've even checked my email or had a chance to drink a Diet Pepsi. It's just that this is the easiest time to go for a walk because it's still cool outside. We can't really go in the evenings when it cools off because of Lily's dinner and bedtime.

So anyway, today our walk was in the afternoon because we were busy this morning. I decided to take some bread along with us, and we went up to the front of our subdivision, where the ducks are. I thought we would sit in the shade and toss the bread to the ducks. Well I was in for a surprise!

Apparently the ducks around here are very accustomed to being fed. They saw us coming from a block away and started heading toward us. We arrived at the first cluster of ducks, and I parked the stroller in the grass and sat Lily down on the ground. As soon as we had stopped, the ducks were swarming. Once they saw the plastic bag with food inside, they came in closer and started chomping their little duck bills in eager anticipation. It was hilarious! I was afraid they might think Lily was a piece of food (they were all clustered around my feet), so I held her while we tossed the bread to the ducks. Lily didn't really know what to think of them at first.

Then we headed further toward the front of the subdivision, where we found a lot more ducks, and that's where the babies were. There must have been at least 20 tiny little yellow ducklings, and there were about 4 that were a little older. I'm telling you, I've never seen such greedy ducks in my whole life, and the babies were just as bad as the adults! There were also a few big geese honking loudly and following us around, begging for food. A couple of the ducks even flew up over the others to get closer to the food.

Once Lily realized that the ducks were following us because of the bread, she thought it was really funny! She kept looking back and forth between me and the ducks, laughing her head off. She especially liked when the ducks flew toward us, and she liked watching the tiny ducklings scurry toward the food that I would throw toward the middle of their group.

I have fed ducks many times before, but this was a whole new experience. I wish I had taken the camera with us this afternoon! Maybe we'll go back in a few days.