When Birds Of A Feather, Don't Flock Together!

Since domestic animals are a part of Nature too, I think a story about them would be appropriate for a topic on nature. So lets have some fun with this week's article, as we learn about the behavior of domestic animals, and what happens when a well meaning human interferes with their usual nature.

When I decided to add a flock of Silkie Bantams to my menagerie, I went to the Sale Barn to see if I could find some Silkie chicks. The Sale Barn is a huge Flea Market in my neck of the woods, and if something you're looking for isn't for sale there, well...it just does not exist!

Pretty soon, I found some adorable Silkie chicks and promptly bought a dozen of them. The woman seller placed them in a cardboard box, and I carried them along as I continued my browsing.

Walking up the next aisle, the loud, unhappy peeping of a sole, yellow duckling caught my attention.

"I've sold all the others, so the little thing is lonely, I guess," the person at the stand said.

"Poor baby. How much do you want for it?" I inquired, feeling sorry for the pitifully peeping bundle of yellow fuzz.

"Oh, you can have it for a dollar. It's a Buff duck. It'll be real pretty when it's grown."

So I bought the duckling and promptly deposited it into the box with the Silkies, never suspecting the future problem I was creating. But both species seemed content with the arrangement at the time, peeping and cheeping happily all the way home.

Since I already had a flock of ducks on my homestead, I figured that when the duckling got older, he could join his kind at the pond. After all, I was familiar with the old saying, "Birds of a feather, flock together." However, I didn't realize that the wrong kind of bonding can create an exception to the rule!

At first, because it was spring, and both days and nights could still be cool, I kept my baker's dozen in a roomy box, in a corner of my kitchen. However, by early-May, they were feathering out, so they graduated to the chicken coop. By that time, too, I had introduced the duckling to the other ducks at the pond. To my surprise, the duckling did not seem to relish his fellow birds, and seemed scared to death of them. And when I tried to put him in the water, so he could swim around, he charged out of there like a rocket, and waddled back to the chickens, complaining all the way. This duck, it seemed, did not take to water!

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