My pair of mallard ducks, who return to the stretch of creek near my house each spring, are back. Actually, they've been back a little while, they usually show up just after Tu B'Shevat. I call them the Duckworths, or the Duckbergs, or sometimes just 'ducks'.
It has been raining like crazy this spring, hard pelting showers, including some hail. The creek rushes high, the rain pours down, and I worry about the ducks. But as much as I want to scoop them up, bring them home, and let them hang out in my bathtub, I realize that they are waddling around with, I dunno, 150 million years or so of information about how to be ducks coded into their DNA, and they know how to do this. Also, I realized after a recent shower that the rain brings out the earthworms from the grass planted in the Ohlone Greenway, and the ducks were happily eating them.
In addition to the rain, I worry about cats, raccoons, mean kids, and toxic runoff, but they come back each year--this is the third year I have seen them--to lay eggs, so I assume the spot is a good one.
Just another sign of spring--the Duckworths are back.
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