NOT!!
Thursday, 14th January – 5.15 pm and the ducks are not in bed. I can see them swimming about on the pond in our neighbours field.
Usually they are in bed at this stage.
Back into the house and gave them another 10 minutes. 5.30 pm still not in.
5.40 pm don the wellies again, and discover half of the ducks are still swimming about in the pond, the other half are huddled in a tight group at the edge.
Back to the kitchen to call in help.
Time to go and try to herd them back to their respective sheds. Climb over fences to, plod through our stream – this is the moment I discover one of my wellies is leaking![when else] – over another fence and into a sodden field.
We get 5 of the muscovy babies (teenagers now) back on the right side of the fence. So I’m left guarding them to make sure they don’t head back to pond while Alfie tries to get the remainder out of the pond. By the way, I’m standing in the stream at this stage… yes, still in the leaking wellington. And in total darkness as Alfie has the torch.
And then it starts to snow!
Can it get any worse?
Alfie makes valiant attempts to get the swimming ducks out of the pond but to no avail. He’s on one side, they on the other. He moves around, they move to the other side several times. In fact … stalemate.
Meanwhile I try to ‘herd’ the 5 charges I have back towards their shed. Pitch dark, uneven ground…. yes, I end up falling into stream.
At least I am now uniformly wet on my lower half.
My 5 charges who normally duck under the fence (excuse the pun!) at the edge of our lawn, have no intention of doing this now. So one by one I had to lift them and practically throw them over the fence.
Finally we are making progress towards the shed as the front house light is on. Then we hit another stumbling block …. the yard is dark. Why does the sensor light never come on when you want it? Eventually the light comes on, and we manage to walk them extremely slowly up the yard to their shed.
We’ve had to abandon efforts 6.45 pm of trying to get the others off the pond.
So folks it is now time for prayers that they survive the night.
Needless to say there are no illuminating photos of this.
A Year In Redwood 