Prodigal brother returns

by Wayne Geiger

June 10, 2006

Two ducks.

Several times a day, I make the short trip out to the barn to do the daily chores, check on the animals and simply get my daily fix. Although I can appreciate when everyone and everything is normal, there are times when I am greeted with surprises...some good, some bad.

The Sanctuary has been very fortunate not to have had many animals dumped at our gate...actually, just four Indian runner ducks.

All four were drakes or males. We can assume they were all from the same clutch or hatching as they were of the same size and were always together at first.

As they matured, two of the males made friends with other ducks and paired off. The other two seemingly identical brothers were gray and black with white fronts and little white circles on the backs of their black heads. They were always together: eating, sleeping and bathing.

I looked forward to seeing them every morning and counted on them being there, but one morning one of the brothers was missing. I looked everywhere for him. In the barn, under the trees, in the tall grass and even with the goats. I did this several times, but he was nowhere to be found. What was worse was the sadness I felt from the remaining brother as he stayed by himself grieving over his loss.

That evening, I made one last trek outside to check on everyone, and I saw two ducks side by side in the near darkness.
At first, I thought the brother had decided to bed down next to another duck for the night.

As I was making a head count of everyone, instead of being down one as I thought I should be, I came up with an extra. In the darkness I couldn’t see who it was. Running inside for a flashlight and stubbing my toe in my careless excitement, I soon discovered, much to my surprise and happiness, the duck in the shadows was the missing brother duck.

Where had he been, and was he okay?

Well, although I may pride myself in having an innate ability to understand animals, I guess I will never really know where he had been. All I know is that he was okay. Most importantly, he and his brother were happy. The prodigal brother had returned!