Ducked

There is a duck couple in Camarillo that has really hit bottom. Instead of begging for food at the nearby fake lake, Community park, or the kitchen door of the big LDS church on the corner (for Christ's sake), they have taken up residence in front of my mom's Assisted Living.

Mom's place is nice enough as Assisted Living goes. She has beautiful trees outside her door, a strip of real grass, and a nearby parking lot that makes her completely accessible when you visit. If she ever decided to leave her room and went outside, she could watch the kids at the jr. high run around the asphalt during P.E., or sit on her porch with a romance novel and get some fresh air for once.

But she doesn't. And neither does anyone else except the staff....which makes the little green belt about the worst place in the country for a duck to find a hand out.

When I saw Mr. and Mrs. Duck, I opened the new box of high fiber cereal I'd just bought and grabbed out a handful to offer them. The wife was all over it (no small task given that she only had half of a top beak), but Big Daddy could care less. I think I could have pelted him with the food and he wouldn't have budged. Did he already know from experience how terrible that stuff tastes?

It never occurred to me until tonight that he might have been busy. No, he probably wasn't 'meditating in the moment.' He might have had nest duty. According to Gary, that same couple was there a year ago. Was this their home base? Had they followed the invisible line that magically drew them back every Spring? Were they registering at Ducklings's R Us?

If so, I wish them well. I'll do what I can to bring them some meals on wheels, maybe throw a little shower, help put up the crib.

Whatever they want.

I'm just grateful they're there, this little cosmic gift for the day. New Life where you would never expect it. Spring springing in all of its newly green "burst of babies" glory.