How to feed a mildly domesticated, wild duck.

Here is the part of my week where I tell you about how I baited my children with bread and threw them at angry wild birds.

Kind of.

We like to save the end of our bread loaves for feeding the ducks at a nearby park. Which is a GREAT idea, if I don't get sick of little plastic bags with two pieces of crust in them and ditch the whole little-house-on-the-prairie persona that I like to play-pretend sometimes.

But today it was 70 degrees and we had something like 7 pieces of end crust piled in my bread basket (which is currently overflowing with potatoes and bananas). Cha-ching.

So we head to the pond at the park, where I happen to spot those good-for-nothing Canadian geese, who will take your fingers off, I'm pretty sure. All this based on the hisses I received from the resident goose of my old office parking garage back in '00. They may be very nice as a species, but that little bastard was mean (and I suppose I have never gotten over it).



So we stalked out a quiet spot on the pond, near some of the ducks we came to feed. Opened the bag of stale bread ends, which apparently is the trumpet call to all of duck kingdom. There was no time for fear.

That's a lie.

There was plenty of time for fear, as I witnessed my children PETTING wild ducks and having whole bread slices plucked for their little fingers. And the more we withdrew, the closer they came, on all sides.

But once I identified the main perpetrator as a large white duck (whom I have named Gus), and tricked his little bird brain by flinging bread as far as my under-toned arms could send it (you are no match for me, Gus!), I noticed the rest of the gang was quite lovely apart from their ring leader. And felt I saved my young children from a small battle with duck bullying.

And then as if on cue, a pack of ducklings arrived all small and cute-like, making me wish I had brought our whole loaf of real bread, because only seven fuzzy babies would make me even consider returning to the store this week with my own pack of ducklings.

And I kind of wonder what would happen if a duckling ate its body weight in bread. I mean, that can't be natural.

It's nice not to be melting in the July heat, but really. There are only so many wild animals we can feed before someone loses an appendage.