.... and on our friend Molly's and son-in-law Tony's, the 7th, a vixen got our much loved duck Hedda, we shall never forget that day and nor shall we forget her. It was such a traumatic experience that I can only now bear to write about it. It was in the later part of the afternoon when Annie rang, they'd just returned from a weekend trip and she wanted to find out how we were - still raw from the loss of Lane four days earlier.
I took the call upstairs in the "office" which has a good view over the garden, and while chatting to Annie I suddenly noticed movement at the far end of the duck enclosure in the field, in fact it looked as is a fight was going on with white wings flailing and something brown in between. At first I thought it was Anke fighting off one of the drakes, but then realized the brown was more red than Anke's dark brown, and the light dawned; it was Hedda who was in a fight with a fox as I could see the other white duck down there, our Candida, standing by the big pond with Captain and Anke.
I flung the window open and screamed FOX at John who was somewhere near the greenhouses. He sprinted off to where I was pointing, and as he got close the fox left Hedda, leapt over the fence with clearance to spare from a standing start and was away through the ditch. John said it was not big enough for a dog fox, so it was a vixen again. She had been trying to pull Hedda, who was still alive, through the mesh fence. Poor Annie had to live through all this on the other end of the phone, through all my confusion and distress, thank you, darling, for all your support! John carried Hedda into the duck shed and I put down a dish of water, but she didn't get to drink out of it; a few spasms and she was dead. John buried her in the enclosure the next day.
It is the feeling of helplessness, the inability to protect our feathered "children", that hurts so much. Having witnessed that vixen's easy leap over the fence is is clear to us now that our efforts to mend the hundred holes the rabbits had made by chewing through the wires and cords were in vain as far as foxes are concerned, even if it had been electrified it wouldn't have made a difference. I know that a fox-proof fence needs to be buried half a metre into the ground to prevent their digging underneath and two metres high and bent outwards at the top to stop them climbing over. Do we want to build such an enclosure? We do not! We want to enjoy our garden, the ducks, and we want the ducks to enjoy the garden and field IN THE DAYTIME. We don't mind foxes coming around at night, we've seen many coming right by our house, bringing on the security light - although not recently, and nor had we seen any droppings in the garden, which is why we were so shocked to find Lane had gone. I still believe that the Pest Control Officers of the Council should shoot daytime foxes. If they're left to their own devices they'll breed generation after generation of more daytime foxes - as if we didn't have enough of them roaming around our towns and gardens. They ARE at the top of the food chain, have NO natural enemy; there is no one except man to control their excessive numbers.
Hedda was the last of the four Campbells we bought in June 2006 after our last fox disaster when we had just Fanny left and four of the boys we hatched in June 2005. She was a great favourite of several of my "duck" friends in Germany [Pine foremost of them], Austria and Luxembourg.
Petra was another one of Hedda's 'fans', and she and her husband Klaus were very shocked to hear of her loss when they arrived for their brief visit on Tuesday evening. We had another shock when the two of them left for their 2-week's holiday in the Cotswolds yesterday after lunch, they could count only 9 out of our group of 10, both John and I checked, only 9. When Petra and Klaus had left I went to check in the hut to see if Billie-Jean [who was the one missing] had gone back into the hut to lay. She wasn't there, nor could she be found in any of the likely places. I was distraught again, thought the vixen had struck again while the four of us had been out all morning at the Bluebell Nursery in Smisby. 4 ducks with the 6 drakes was already a no-no pushing me every day into trying a separation once more for the health of the girls, just 3 with the 6 could not be contemplated. So I set to getting an extra food station ready by the duck shed for 5 boys and starting my attempts to catch the 4 girls and limping Joseph to give them 2 weeks' rest in the old chicken run with the little pond. Just then Billie-Jean turned up to my HUGE relief. We found she had been sitting on 5 eggs hidden between the Post Office wall and the stems of the Philadelphus!
I managed to catch Billie-Jean with the landing net given to us for that purpose by John's cousin Barry. We smeared her pecked head and neck and trampled back thickly with Vaseline and put her into the chicken run. After exhaustive attempts to catch the four other candidates [who tried everything to get out of our way, running all around the garden, into the field and into the ditch where I got ripped and scratched again driving them out] I got Beyoncé and then Bless in the net. They got the Vaseline treatment and joined B-J in the run. Joseph and Gertie escaped all our efforts at capture, so we left them for a couple of hours to calm down and for us to catch our breath.
Around teatime I could see the group getting close to the gate by the duck shed, Gertie lagging behind a bit. She legged it as soon as she saw me, but I managed to corner Joseph [who was limping much worse again after all our chasing] against the gate and threw him in with the 3 "B"s. We did not want to risk having chases all over the garden again, nor did we want them to hide in the ditch, so we waited till bedtime ............... and couldn't believe our luck: the 5 boys and Gertie had gone into the shed! They came out as we approached, but John managed to drive them in again. We couldn't leave Gertie at the mercy of the lads overnight, so John went into the shed while I held the door to - you wouldn't believe the rumpus that ensued inside and how they nearly beat the door down, I could hardly hold it. But finally John passed Gertie out to me, I vaselined her and carried her to the hut in the run. Again we couldn't believe our luck as the 3 "B"s and Joseph marched into the hut voluntarily, all I had to do was add Gertie out of my arms. ............... This morning these 5 were too frightened to come out of the hut, they waited until I'd gone. The 5 drakes, however, FLEW out of the shed door right down to the stile - in case I had in mind to chase them again....
The three "B"s settled down in front of their hut, while below you can see the escapoligists Gertie on the far right of the picture and Joseph lying in front of big white Jedda.
I'll put in more pictures and some of Petra and Klaus' visit when I have more time.
No comments:
Post a Comment