Phew…what a sweat fest it has been for the last week.  I have been walking about with a sore head from all the heat.  Today is a blessing with morning rains and marked coolness.  Oh lovely!!  So, the headache was definitely due to the heat.

Another silly Duckie Tale!!  About 6 months ago, we bought a new lot of fowl from a neighbour; this included a pair of geese and a pair of turkeys (The Overlord and the Duchess).  The neighbour was trying to off load her fowl because her dogs were attacking them and she felt sad that they had to kept in a protected coop all the time.  She threw in a duckie as a freebie since it was all alone and she had lost her drake partner to the dog.

At that point, when this new duckie joined us we had 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 duckies.  After about 2 to 3 weeks, I kept on counting 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 duckies.  This was back when the ducks had total free range of the entire farm and could come and go as they pleased.  They were herded into the coop at night.   Some days I would count 8 ducks as they trooped into the coop for their daily corn ration.  Other days there would be 6 ducks so I reckoned that some of them wanted to stay out and I felt that having independant ducks was okay at that time.  During the last 6 months our duckie rearing practices have changed because they were laying eggs haphazardly all over the farm.  Most of the time the dogs were getting them.  We decided to keep them for a short while in the guinea pig houses.  When we made this change, we had 7 duckies and I could not find number 8 (the new recruit).  We looked everywhere and gave her up as lost.

So, we had 7 ducks definitely for a while.  Four months ago, we let them all out in the confines of the duck coop (aka zen garden).  After a while, there were 6 ducks.  No idea what happened to that one.  Then there were 5 ducks (snake?)…then, definitely 4 by the end of the boa incident.  So, I’ve been counting 4 for about 6 weeks now.  I need to remind you  at this point that the coop is now sealed so the ducks can’t get in or out of it.

Last night I counted 1-2-3-4…5!!

Where did the fifth one come from???  It just appeared from nowhere and joined the usual food fight in the evening like she had always been there.  She is really skinny and she looks like the new duckie that we gave up for lost about 6 months ago.

We have no idea where she came from and what she has been doing all this time.  Gnome reckons that she has been hiding inside the cardamom bush in the coop all this time (setting with no eggs!) and she has been so perfectly camouflaged that we haven’t spotted her.  What…for 6 months!!!  Hmmmm….maybe…or she’s a magician duckie and walks through walls and coops!!

So, where have you been all this time??

(Not Telling!)

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