The last time my mom came for a visit, as she was taking a load of her stuff to her vehicle, she noticed and alerted me to a steadily increasing amount of ducks. We first noticed them as we were coming back from Mass, and then there were suddenly tons of them outside as she got ready to make the trip home. A man in the building next door told her they’d come to guard and mourn a duckling that a car had run over. It was quite a sight to behold. A little while later a man from a house across the street came to shoo them away. I mourned right along with those ducks that day. Animals are smarter than we give them credit for, and we could learn a thing or two from their sense of community.
I’d noticed this mama duck a lot since I moved to this neighborhood almost two months ago. Particularly that she had a LOT of babies. Since her baby died, that mama duck has split up her babies to protect them. I first noticed when taking my dog for a walk the next morning. I get up super early, and there that mama duck was in the middle of a side street just as the sun was coming up. I saw she and half the babies walking, and when a car went past too quickly and not even coming near her, those babies went underneath her until it past. Then she kept walking, and I couldn’t tell because my left eye is damaged to a degree, but I think she was giving me the side eye. My dog sniffed under a bush weeks prior and out she came wings flapping, so our relationship has been shaky ever since. 😂
We forget people have feelings a lot of the time too. I’ve been guilty of being unkind and shooing someone away a time or two in my life. Sort of like that man did from across the street with those ducks in mourning. Wouldn’t the world be a better place, though, if we sheltered others from the storms life threw at them? Or were so selfless like that mama duck was when she split her babies up that we helped someone who needed it, uttered a kind word, respected someone’s views that were different then our own, or covered our face with a piece of fabric.