A Good Deed Goes Wrong

[Polar Boy]

This morning my wife, son and I came upon a baby duck. It was sitting motionless in the grass. There was no sign of the mother or other siblings. There were some crows on the lawn a short distance away and I figured that if the crows found the duck they'd kill it for certain.

So we decided to take it to a small duck pond that was a block or two away. I figured that would give the little thing its best shot at survival.

When we got to the pond my son put the duck down and it immediately hopped into the water and swam up to a mother duck and her brood. We were pleased and thought we had saved this little creature.

Then the mother duck spun around and viciously attacked "our" baby. It tried to get away by swimming among some cat tails, but the duck pursued it and continued her attack. When we last saw the little one it was on its side trying to swim away. We all knew it was doomed, but as we walked away we each told the other "maybe it'll be okay".

This episode broke our hearts (especially my son's). It's been eating at me all day. You try to do something right and it turns to crap. Sometimes life just ain't fair.

Yeah, now I know the best course of action would probably to have left it where we first saw it. But who knew?

Damn! What a crummy day.

 

[Crazy K38]

did you learn a lesson? if so then it was a productive day, maybe not the best but put the lesson that duck taught you to use and the duck died for a reason

 

[Amici]

It is, of course, possible that the crows would have gotten it. It may have been abandoned by its mother for some reason.

Then again, maybe it was just lost and did what wild young animals instinctively do: FREEZE and wait for Mom.

Motion attracts predators; remaining motionless means staying alive.

Ask any animal control officer about "rescuing" a wild animal offspring.

 

[cshoff]

Mother nature is a cruel, unforgiving, and sometimes heartless old wench. While I can certainly understand the trauma from your experience, it goes to show that in the overall scheme of things, mankind is pretty insignificant. Momma duck did exactly what momma duck knew she was supposed to do. That is the difference between a human and that momma duck in this instance; momma duck acted because it was vital for the existence of herself and her offspring, whereas you humans acted because of the way it made you feel at the moment.

My guess is that next time, you will probably not intervene in a situation such as this.

 

[Jerry N.]

I feel for ya. It sucks - generally our nature is to help but unfortunately, I've never seen a good outcome of intervening in nature. Usually it was a bird that died in the box after a couple days of the kids trying to feed it. I think Barb C. had a squirrel she tried to save - I forget how that one turned out but I think it didn't turn out well. However, I wouldn't have thought that another duck would have attacked it like you had happen. Especially hard with your kid there.

Unfortunately, the best thing to do is leave nature alone or if an animal is suffering, put it down humanely as possible.

 

[redlevel]

Nature is a Mother.

 

[Denver Dick]

Incident 1: A very young dove apparently tried to fly from the nest a day or two too soon. It was flabbing around on the ground in my backyard. I did not want a neighbor's cat or my dogs to get it. I caught it (it tried to hide under a bush). I took in to house an placed it in a box and put in some water. Next morning I tried to get it to fly away in the backyard but the little guy just couldn't make it. Later that evening we tried again. He was just short of taking off. Next morning, we had lift off and he made it to the roof of a neighbor's house where some other dove joined him. I think he came back to my backyard for the next few years. Now we have a mess of dove who call the trees around my backyard home.

Incident 2: Driving a 1/4 mile from my home, I saw a pigeon near the side of the road. It was flapping oddly. I wasn't in a particular hurry so I stopped the car and got out to push it to the gutter, out of the roadway. Well, physically it looked fine. It was an August morning and I knew it was going to get really hot, so I went a step further and placed it in the shade of a bush. I said, "Good luck, little guy" and went on up to Starbucks to get my coffee. On the way back home, I stopped and saw that the little nut had flapped himself out of the shade. So, less a cat get him, I placed him in the car and took him home. I put him in a box with water. He was having trouble standing, seriously dazed. I suspected he had hit a car's windshield and ended up on the side of road. I didn't think he was going to make it, but I figured I would give him a day or two. I checked on him right before I went to bed that night, he still looked dazed. The next morning he was alert, active and seemed ready to go. I took him out in the backyard and he took off like a rocket.

So see, sometimes it can work out.

 

[rchance]

Maybe the the baby duck did belong to this momma duck and this baby duck did something wrong and momma was just scolding it.

 

[mwtdvm]

Intervention is not always right

OTOH, you take the duckling home, feed and nurture it.. It imprints on "humans".. does not identify with it's "correct" ethnic origins and for the rest of it's life, it tries to follow humans around and be a part of them. Doomed!

Damned if you do and damned if you don't...

Life is like that...

I appreciate you tried to "do the right thing"...

 

[GatorFarmer]

OTOH, you take the duckling home, feed and nurture it.. It imprints on "humans".. does not identify with it's "correct" ethnic origins and for the rest of it's life, it tries to follow humans around and be a part of them. Doomed!

But tasty when properly prepared.

 

[whitecoyote]

Sorry to hear about "your duck". I guess it's natures way.
What's worse is seeing humans do it to their young!

 

[BarbC]

I think Barb C. had a squirrel she tried to save - I forget how that one turned out but I think it didn't turn out well.

He was so little and he had fallen or was blown out of the nest high up in one of our trees one windy autumn day. He had literally reached up to my husband to pick him up. We put him in a bird cage and fed him dog and kitten formula from an eyedropper. We kept him warm with a heating pad under the cage and a hot water bottle wrapped under his blanket. He was eating solid foods and wouldn't drink the milk. He started to get sick in about 2 weeks, wasted away even though we tried to give him the milk every few hours 24/hours/day and died from, I believe, metabolic bone disease because he didn't get his mother's milk and the calcium he needed.

We felt terrible because we had tried so hard and we really liked the little fella, but we only put off the inevitable, I suppose.

 

[Hunt200]

One time my neighbor was cleaning out is AC, 3 naked baby birds were dislodged from their nest. I picked them up with rubber gloves on not to leave my scent, and placed them in a near by nest box. The parents came back and raised them all. We got lucky that time.

 

[CAJUNLAWYER]

I remember one time watching on TV as some people were releasing back into the wild a bird that they had nursed back to health. As the TV camera's rolled, they opened the cage and the bird rose majesticly into the sky......and then was nailed by a hawk. Mother Nature is a cold heartless shrew at times but it is what it is......you do what you think is best and you takes your chances.

 

[ingmansinc]

As a young boy of about 10 years of age I would bring home baby rabbits that I found when mowing lawns or maybe squirrels that had fallen from their nest. My dad always said that they would not survive and it was survival of the fittest where Mother Nature was concerned. Still he would allow me to try and feed them as he knew I couldn't take them back where I found them. They would always die and I eventually learned my lesson about nature. If I left those babies alone a fox, cat, dog, etc. had a small meal and life went on. It is what it is. I read something over thirty years ago that I liked very much and I framed it and it has hung on our wall every since. Allow me to share.

Closeness with Nature

The Challenge is
To use relationships with Nature
as a Springboard,
Begin to think of our total
surroundings as an extension
of our House,
And all Living Things as
Members of the Household.
​

 

[mstuhr]

Some times it just doesn't pay

Howdy,
Several years back I was working midnights and heard a kitten in the weeds close to where I was working. It was starving and I figure abandoned. I took it home and fed it and the next night went to work on midnights. I backed out of the garage closed the door and went to work and returned the next morning to find half a kitten sticking out from under the garage door.
Mashed the juice out of him.
It's a dangerous world out there.
Live a little, life is short!
Mike

 

[montezumaz]

As Marlin Perkins used to say, "Welcome to the Wild Kingdom."
Many years ago, a lion and a tiger at the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City, Utah had twins. One day one of the zoo keepers took the opportunity to touch one of the ligers. Later in the day, the mother took one sniff of her offspring and clawed it to death. So, instead of two ligers, the zoo only had one ... Shasta the Liger.
Nature is going to take her course, even if you try to do the right thing. A harsh lesson for children, I will agree.

 

[Bailey Boat]

My wife always says that I'm cruel and don't have a heart when I won't intervene in a nature situation like this. I always try and explain that it tears my heart out to see how these things usually turn out but that's the way it needs to be, as Mother Nature intends.....