Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Gardener's Delight - Killer Ducklings

After a few days on oatmeal, greens, banana and hardboiled eggs, my man decided it was time for some live-food for Nassi and Occhi. So, while digging trenches for our veggie terraces in the backyard, he ran into some fantastic duckling lunch: wiggely worms. Giggling, he and Aurelia fed them to the duckies who devoured them. (Robert is as much in love with them as Aurelia and I are. He even got up in the middle of the night after they peeped him awake and fed them. Thanks, hon!!!)

Back to the worms: Needless to say, that Aurelia wanted to find more worms to feed them to the peepers. How happy was she when she learnt that Mami was indeed expectig the delivery of two lbs of worms by mail. It will take some convincing to make sure these worms will actually go into the worm bin for composting, as planned. Thank goodness, I ordered two lbs so I can share with these hungry little beaks.

When we had the ducklings free ranging in the backyard, they were running after everything that moved and were pretty successfull in catching several bugs. Robert, the Zoology major, explained to Aurelia that ducks have much better vision than humans so that they can see all the little bugs flying or crawling by. And to prove his point, he grabbed a bit of lint from his sweater and let it fall down to Nassi and Occhi, who imediatelly snagged (and snacked) it.

Then of course the game 'Pull the lint out of the beak' began.  It's like having two more kids in the house: You have to watch and protect them; mostly from themselves and curiousity.... I have also already pulled a 3 inch burlap thread out of one beak. She must have thought this was the longest, driest worm evah!

I remembered that I had read that gardeners often complain about a bug defestation while they are indeed dealing with a duck deficiency. How true!!! So, whatever the bug you got, bring it on ... errr over and we will throw it infront of these killer beasts.

And they look so innocent . . .


"Nature never says one thing and wisdom another." Decimus Junius Juvenalis

No comments:

Post a Comment