The past few days it has become evident that our squatters, literally, are a nuisance. Last fall we had two Chinese ducks move in on our pond. Wasn’t a big problem as they pretty much stayed away but then…. they started to come up to the house… and one of them comes onto the lower porch to either admire himself in the glass door window or try to talk to the duck in the window? not sure which? The problem is he leaves his calling cards on the porch… Well, yesterday I determined; to get it cleaned up… not so easy as the Duck POOP stains the concrete…
The red is just good old Oklahoma red mud that easily washes off. I know this because I used a bit of Simple Green and a brush and it came off but the middle stain is where the big splotch of duck POOP was? I used a wire brush… still not removing the duck stain and I have several of these on the lower porch… never thought I would have wished it was epoxy coated till now…I even used the power washer and it doesn’t touch that stuff… so I moved chairs and an old rolling table in front of the door so that stupid Duck can no longer see himself…hope he gets very discouraged about coming up to the house but am sure that will not fix my problem…
The Duck also makes it back over to the neighbors fence to talk to 2 other ducks over there nearly every day… I have watched this and they will bob and weave and make funny noises to each other but for some reason the ducks on my side won’t go home? A week ago I notice that one of them had a hurt foot and was having a very hard time getting around so I caught it and took it back and told the neighbor about the hurt foot and at the same time the black duck came up to talk so I grabbed him and threw him over the fence figuring that he would stay with the ones that couldn’t leave… WRONG!… He immediately that afternoon came back…. That pissed me off.
So yesterday after trying hard to clean the porch and my attitude about the ducks going down faster than a hail stone, I noticed he was heading for the fence… I thought maybe I can get lucky and grab him again… well not so lucky this time either… I ran in and grabbed one of the Dog crate to put along the fence path they had worn , hoping I could guide him in and close the door on him… my plan was to capture, and trim his flight feathers so he can’t get out of their yard anymore…
I had this up against the fence and the door open to use as a guide and then tried to move the duck down to it… well, that duck is smarter than I figured… He knew that thing was not there the last time down and would not get near it… I spent over and hour of chasing him back and forth along the fence… you see my fence (in question) has a lot of cedar trees and bushes along it so you just cant rush up there and grab… and the duck can fly so in open ground he just takes off…
I had the dog crate set in that small open area as I tried to get the duck in to the crate… no luck and I can’t reach through fast enough to get to the duck… he made a dash when I missed and then flew back to the pond…
What next… a little thought and I figured I should get a “catcher” like we had on the farm and maybe get close enough to just grab him by the leg or neck…I went to the farm supply stores and gee, no one has them. What is worse, unless you talk to someone my age, they have no idea what your talking about. Beyond that you can’t easily find heavy wire to make the hook from. I got some at the Mill but that was not near heavy enough or big enough… it was stiff but I couldn’t get it straight to make the handle and then it occurred to me that the tomato cages were much larger wire… close to #9… so I kind of improvised some stuff I had… and old broken tomato cage cut to get the wire, a 6 ft. hoe handle that the hoe fell off of some time ago, and some pipe clamps…
So I had a “chicken hook”… I hoped… my fear is the wire wasn’t as big and stiff as I remember, just hoped it would work out…
Today, there was that stupid duck… oh and here is the one in question taken last fall..
Damn ugly duck!… not as ugly as the ones with more white… and in my watching of this duck after I caught the one that was hurt… he thinks he can be friends with the wild geese, the turtles, anything that is in the pond?
Had some wild geese fly in yesterday and this duck made a dash to get up close to them… not threatening like just wanted to be close and when they came up on the damn, so did the duck… sticking real close but the geese tired of it real quick and left… oh and back to today… I noticed him moving toward the house and I stepped out on the deck so he moved off to head to the neighbors fence… my thought was , “now I can try the hook” . Well after standing in the rain for 45 minutes and running back and forth around those big cedars I hadn’t even touched the duck but once and that wasn’t enough to capture… I finally gave up as it was too damn wet out…
Didn’t bother the Duck…..
He came out 15 minutes or so after I left and once in open ground flew to the pond and swam off to the other side… I am hoping I may have upset him enough he will move on, but doubt it as he hasn’t been afraid to come back even thought the dogs chase him off every time they see him… so some time in the next few weeks I will try again and if I fail a few too many times…. Pow!… we may have to figure out how to eat duck?
WD0AJG