Vision versus Reality

A favorite gift at our house is something that breathes (animal, vegetable, or floral). We are especially into living gifts at Easter, to further symbolize our excitement that He lives! The plan I "hatched" for Jim's Easter gift, shortly after the arrival of the wood ducks was....ducks. I could already see them floating blissfully in the pond, adding color and life to it. The visual was a little more exciting than reality!

After a little searching, I was able to find two newly hatched ducklings, just in time for Easter giving!  They were adorable, and Jim loved them. He liked them so much that he went back to the store on Easter Monday and came home with more critters... some banty chicks, a pair of mallard ducklings, and a pair of guineas. I grew up with guineas at my home in Texas, so Jim thought they would be a neat surprise for me. A short time after this major addition to our little place, Jim was called to Illinois to help with respite care for his mother who was very ill. That left me holding the box of quackers!

The thing that sometimes gets overlooked on these occasions are the care and feeding of critters. Because we really didn't have a place set up for this fledgling flock, they ended up in the house. I hasten to explain that at the time we were living in a small apartment attached to the main house while we did major remodeling on the other place.. The ducklings began their life in the "old" house bathtub, and the chicks were under a heat lamp in a child size plastic swimming pool  in the "old" living room. Sounds simple enough....BUT....guineas are wild creatues. In about two days they had figured out that getting out of the swimming pool was a piece of cake. God had given them wings, afterall.  Chasing them around the room got tiresome very quickly. Along with a fish net, I also acquired some wire fencing to cover the pool. The ducklings, in the meantime, were thriving in the bathtub. O my, how they did smell!

Critters grow rapidly. In a very short time, the ducklings needed more room.. I managed to build a sort of three-cornored fence under a tree in the back yard. That of course meant figuring out a method for feeding and watering them. That didn't seem too difficult until I discovered that the ducks would rather play in water than drink it. I would fill the water pan... they would dirty it and empty it. It seemd a never-ending cycle.

By the time Easter Season had come to an end, we had come to love our little feathered family. We also had many lessons yet to learn.