Menage à Trois Bingo

We have ducklings! We hadn't seen M. et Mme. l'Orange for some time, but yesterday Tammie and Rosa called me all excited to announce that Madame showed up with four ducklings in tow. They spent most of the day between the ground feeder and our pond. When I got home from work, they were still there. Nobody ran away at the approach of a car, nor of a human.
And lo and behold, while we were all watching, a fifth duckling appeared from out of nowhere (or maybe from under the feeder). Monsieur was nowhere to be seen; when I asked, Tammie said that Rosa had been asking about him all day, and that apparently mother ducks raise the young alone.

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Rosa started summer school on Monday ("Ready! Set! Go to Kindergarten!"). So far she has really been enjoying it. It's been rather an adjustment for us all, though; her class starts at eight a.m. We have to get up significantly earlier to get her snack made and all of her stuff together and get her to school on time, and we've had to change her bedtime commensurately. She's been pretty good about the change, thank gods.

In the afternoons, she's having her first swimming lessons. Finally. I've only been talking about sending her (taking her) to swimming lessons for the last four years! She loves it. I knew she would, after last summer at the lake where she practically grew gills.

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Well crap. As I'm writing this, I received a phone message from Armida. Rosa is very sick--high fever, tonsils inflamed, sore throat--and she is going to take her to the doctor.

We have fishes! Monday evening the three of us and Rosa went to Petsmart
across Manchester and bought five medium koi (about five inches long),
one solid yellow-orange, one black and white with an orange face, one
white and orange, one black and white with just a couple orange dots,
and oh-I-forget. We introduced them to the pond and tried feeding them
some pellets. No interest. Well, maybe they're tired and stressed out by
being moved. We also noticed that the waterfall was flowing much more
slowly than usual, so we took the filter pads out and cleaned them of a
thick layer of mud. The last rainfall had washed quite a bit of loose
dirt into the pond.

Tuesday evening we cleaned the filter yet again and tried to find the
fishies. They're all there, but they still haven't been seen to eat
anything, and they're spending all of their time lying in the rocks at
the bottom of the pond. I don't know whether that's because the water is
still chilly--it's been about 63 degrees in the morning, up to 75 in the
afternoon--or whether they're still stressed out, or there's too much
sun and they're seeking all the shade they can find, or there's a lot of
edible material in the layer of stuff at the bottom of the pond. But all
our resources say you can't starve them to death, so we're trying not to
worry. I do hope they come out soon and start exploring their new home.

If I remember, I should buy a couple oranges. Koi are said to like fresh
food, especially citrus and squash; the Petsmart near the City House had
a quarter orange and a slice of zucchini in each koi tank. The fish were
going nuts over it.

In other news, Tuesday morning we had *three* ducks. Not two parents and
a duckling, but three adult ducks (two drakes and a hen). Most of the
time there are still only two; the third might have been an interloper
trying to steal Madame l'Orange away from Monsieur. There's at least one
set of ducklings over on the loch but apparently *our* ducks have none.

We have a batch of goslings at the loch as well. Not at our house, but
down by the corner at Manchester, I saw a pair of Canada geese and
at least five fuzzy yellowish goslings. Tammie has counted seven, but I
was driving past on my way to work and did not see them long enough to
get a good count.