as the weather has been so beautiful lately, we decided to walk down to the lake for a bit of fresh air tonight. when we got there, we found this little guy:

he’s cute, right? but he was alone. there were no other ducks. he was also very hungry. he kept trying to eat trash and cigarette butts. kaileb didn’t like this. so naturally he fed him.

then they took a walk around the lake.

they became quite close. bonded, if you will.

so close that when we started walking home, we turned around to see this:

we walked a little faster. surely he’ll turn around. he’ll go back. right? oh. no. wrong. here’s kaileb having a talk with him. he’s walking backwards trying to convince the duck to go back to the lake:

but he wasn’t getting it. so matt stepped in. here’s a rather blurry shot of him giving the duck what for:

that didn’t work. you’ll notice the duck blithely ignoring matt’s admonishments as he struts right past him. he continued to follow us anyway. so, the moral of this story is this: never befriend a duck. once you do, you can’t get rid of them. sort of like the unemployed and politicians.

the story had a happy ending though, because once we got home and realized the duck wasn’t going to go back to the solitary, starving life of the pond the dogs ate him.

no! i’m just kidding!

kaileb mentioned a neighbor a few streets down who raises ducks and chickens. we piled into the car with the duck and went to see “the duck lady” as kaileb calls her. she was tickled to take him in. he now has a cozy home with other duck friends and plenty of delicious duck food. also? it turns out that feeding ducks bread is bad for them. true story. look it up.

kaileb was sad to see his friend leave, as were we. but he can go visit anytime. country life is so adventurous!