Thirty-four days. Our wood duck hen sat for thirty-four days. We were losing hope, afraid the freeze back in March did it. On Sunday morning I got a text from a bayou neighbor, “Today is jump day for one of our houses!”
“Our duck has been sitting for 34 days. No hatching yet. I’m not sure we should keep waiting.”
“Mine sat for longer than usual.”
So I flipped over to our RIng app. Did I hear cheeping? Mother hen was eating a shell. They were hatching!
You probably want to know how many, but it’s nearly impossible to count when they are little blurry black blobs wiggling.
Monday was Jump Day. It was also a school/work day. We had to rely on the camera. Jeff set up a new Ring camera outside of the house in order to record the jump. Around 10:00, I checked the cameras. Gone. All the ducks had jumped. I missed it, but the camera did not.
As I showed the video to my student, Avalyn, she named the little ducklings. “Come on, Tiffany, you can do it!” she urged as one of the babies hesitated to jump. Avalyn also wrote a poem-song (impromptu) to celebrate Jump Day!
Wood duck, wood duck
Avalyn, 2nd grade
open your shell.
Come out, come out, come out now!
Little duck, little duck,
quack with your snout.
Little duck little duck, little duck
don’t you frown
Come play in the bayou
and make no sound.
Reflections on the Teche 