Thank goodness there is a "General Chat" section on this forum because I want to share this but it has nothing to do with Ryan or Dan (except for the cuteness factor, I suppose...*L*)
Earlier this evening, I opened the front door, about to head outside to water our garden. The next thing I know, around the corner of the house, trooping across the lawn, was a mother duck and her 9 babies! We live in a town, not in a rural area. I was so shocked, all I could say was "Oh!! DuckduckduckduckduckDUCCKKKKKK!!" My boyfriend and I managed to get our cat inside but the the neighbor's dog came racing over the see what all the action was about, and his barking scared the mother duck away. We were able to gather the 9 ducklings into a box and waited outside for a while to see if the chirping would attract the mother duck back for her babies. No such luck.
Fortunately, my boyfriend's family lives on a ranch an hour outside of town, so the ducklings are now en route to their new home (and likely a lonely chicken will become their new mommy!) I suppose it's good that he's left with them. In the 45 minutes we had them in the house, I petted them all (they were snoozing in the box) and was *this* close to naming them. It's just way too easy to become attached to cute, soft, helpless chirping things.
The only situation that beats this in recent years for me is two winters ago, when we had so much snow and it was so cold that there were 12 mother-baby pairs of MOOSE wandering through the town streets for several months. I never felt more Canadian in my life than the day I turned a corner walking to work and came within 15 feet of a mother moose and her enormous calf. It doesn't get much more stereotypically Canadian than that! *L*
Dee