My brother-in-law (B) has graciously allowed me to post this account on my blog, even though he and my sister (A) don’t really get the whole blog thing. 

Over the last few months, we have been witness and supporter to a mother mallard and her brood of 13 eggs, nested only inches from our front walk. 

We fed Momma Mallard and covered her eggs for her and put out water; we created a shelter of plants so she would feel more secure, we even let our flowers die because we thought our water might prove too cold for the eggs.   

We began with 13 eggs but soon, a predator of some sort came and took two, leaving us with 11…and we watched and we waited.  We researched the future, we watched the calendar and most importantly, we watched the nest, eager for the arrival of our baby ducks and always impressed with the inborn, God given instinct the mother had for her soon to be born ducklings.

 We knew the ducklings were to hatch soon and we were incredibly excited.  Every morning and evening we would watch for signs of activity in the nest and momma mallard grew more and more protective.  Then, Wednesday night: tragedy.  Thursday morning A opened the door, checking the nest to make sure all was well, but instead of the familiar momma mallard on her nest, she was greeted by chaos.  The eggs and nest were speckled with blood and a pool of red covered the sidewalk.  Feathers were everywhere, in the bushes, grouped in the yard, stuck in the pool of blood.  Something horrific had happened.   

Momma Mallard was dead, half devoured and near the nest lay two, newly hatched ducklings, killed in the onslaught. Our hearts were broken, our eyes filled with tears.

I cleaned up the mess and covered the remaining eggs in the nest and we both left for work.  We thought our tale had ended in tragedy.  Perfectly natural, but tragic nonetheless. 

But, God’s creation is a wonderful thing. 

When A got home from work, still reeling from the mayhem of the morning, she heard a chirp!  Then another, and another!  She found four ducklings in and around the nest!  One, bold little fella had found his way into the middle of a bush, the others remained in and around the nest.  Their down had dried revealing a beautiful yellow and brown pattern and they chirped and jumped and were full of life. 

In all, we had five, beautiful brown and yellow ducklings with one egg still looking for the right encouragement to come out.  It was magnificent.  

 We took our little ducks to a rescue shelter for water fowl and entrusted them to the crazy ducklady but overall, a horrific experience turned into a thing of beauty and of grace. 

It certainly reminds me of Jesus’ words in Matthew 6:26: “Look at the birds of the air, they do not sow or reap or store away in barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not much more valuable than they?” 

What a lesson!  God protected the ducklings from the predator, He gave them the instinct to be born without guidance, He put them in our yard so someone could scoop them up and protect them after their mother was killed, and He even provided a crazy ducklady to care for them beyond our means.  If God does all this for baby ducks, what in the world does He have in store for those who love Him and follow Him? 

I cried half the morning because I was so sad about the gruesome way the mommy was killed and thought the babies wouldn’t come out of their shells because the mom wouldn’t be there to talk to them when it was time and if they did hatch, I thought they would either break their necks getting out of the nest (which one little guy did) or they would get eaten. And we so much wanted to meet them.