Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

The frogs are rarely mistaken.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Democrats are back in array!

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

It’s a doggy dog world.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

It could be worse. Vance could have said “post-menopausal sows.” Waiting for that audiotape to surface.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

The US Supreme Court is on the ballot in november.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

The current Supreme Court is a rogue court. Very dangerous.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

You are here: Home / Pet Blogging / Duck Blogging / Respite Open Thread: Ducklings Week 2 Update

Respite Open Thread: Ducklings Week 2 Update

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Respite Open Thread: Ducklings Week 2 Update

The speed at which they grow is amazing. Here they are on Saturday. Just a couple of ducklings with their Great Dane and his stuffed duck.

Respite Open Thread: Ducklings Week 2 Update 1

And here they are today. They grow like Great Dane puppies! And their feet are sooo big now, it’s comical. I tried to get a photo of them, but cooperative they were not. I’ll try again tomorrow.

This has been a big week. They’ve been learning to swim (yes, they kind of have to learn), they’ve spent time running around the house (for enrichment – once the weather is nice, they’ll go outside in their penned area to explore), and their time with the Danes much more playful and they hold their own.

When they were running around the living room the other night, Bixby brought them his tug rope and they went after the fringe. I intervened before it took a turn. He continues to bring them toys to play with when they are out of their crate.

Bless the big Beast for being such a love.

As their third week progresses they’ll begin to get their pin feathers and move into their awkward phase. When Penelope came to live with us, she was just moving out of that phase – she was about 4-5 weeks old. As weather permits, these two will spend more and more supervised time outside.  There are several neighborhood kids who cannot wait.

More photos and video here.

I was going to wait and post this tonight, but it looks like we could use a lunchtime (ish) diversion.

Go ahead and consider this an open thread

Reader Interactions

110Comments

  2. 2.

    TaMara (HFG)

    I’m working in the living room right now, because I let them out of the crate to hang out on their blanket with Bixby and they kept following me into my office. As long as I’m within sight, they hang out on their blanket, play with their (dog) toys, and are happy. But should I leave…LOL

  3. 3.

    mrmoshpotato

    As weather permits, these two will spend more and more supervised time outside. There are several neighborhood kids who cannot wait.

    Let the madness begin continue. ?

  5. 5.

    Elizabelle

    @MomSense:   Yes!  I was hoping they would be getting scarves!

    TaMara:  what’s the snow situation?  Do you still have a lot in your yard?

  6. 6.

    TaMara (HFG)

    @MomSense: Well, technically, we only need one more, because, you know, Penelope’s scarf is available. These two are a direct reaction to how wonderful Penelope was – and I’m doing my best to domesticate them so they’ll be as sweet as she was.

  10. 10.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Love them! You can drop the “-lings” from their descriptor any old day now. And Bixby is such a good boy, yes he is.

    More respite, in case you missed it yesterday during the call between President Biden and the Irish Taoiseach: three young people reading WBY’s “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.” You will definitely recognise one of the readers.

    https://youtu.be/okVbYj1jk2s

  11. 11.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Awww.  Such cuties.  Destined to be cheerleaders for Duck U (and Mellow Out).

    Bixby’s not a bad sort himself!

  12. 12.

    germy

    I’m currently reading a collection of George Orwell essays.

    One of them quotes an old joke about a man who walks into a paper supply store:

    Man:  “Do you keep stationary, Miss?”

    Clerk: “No, sometimes I wiggle a little.”

  14. 14.

    TaMara (HFG)

    BTW, they have names now that I think are sufficiently gender neutral if they should turn out to be boys instead of girls or one of each. The big reveal will probably be in the next update. We’re still trying them out…

  17. 17.

    germy

    Yesterday my wife was looking out a window when I heard her let out a loud exclamation.

    I looked and saw a squirrel jumping from a tree to a neighbor’s roof, with what appeared to be a bird in its mouth.  I didn’t know they ate birds, so we googled it.

    Apparently, they do sometimes.

  21. 21.

    geg6

    Made my day! It’s gloomy wet weather here today after several weeks of lots of sunshine, so I could use a picker upper. This was it! Bixby with the ducklings is just too much cuteness.

  22. 22.

    SFAW

    Thanks for the duckling pics. They’re very relaxing.

    Now that Spring is almost here, there will be a flock of Canada geese that will take up residence in/near a marsh that I drive by on a near-daily basis. For the most part, I can do without the geese, frankly, but pretty soon there there will be goslings, and it’s good to see them being herded around by the adults (as well as just being goslings). I don’t recall how many of the yoots were there last year, but my oft-foggy memory tells me it was 10 or 20.

  23. 23.

    ziggy

    Thanks for the video link, love it! They are adorable! I can’t believe the cat is so blase about them though.

  25. 25.

    CaseyL

    Whatever time of day (or night), and whatever else is going on (good or not), is always a good time for a duckling update!

    Love watching them figure out swimming.  “Look how fast I can go!  Wheee!” – it’ll be fun to see them dart around in something bigger, like a kiddie pool.  And to see how well they mix in with the older ladies, Maddie and Mabel; who, IIRC, were nonplussed at first by Penelope Pearl.

    And I love how they get along with the Gentle Giants, Bixby and Scout.

  26. 26.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @JanieM:

    And by the way, how totally fucking awesome is it that we have a POTUS who loves and supports and prioritises poetry?

  28. 28.

    TaMara (HFG)

    @Ken: And Maddie and Mabel – who at this point will be their biggest threat.

    I have a penned area just for them and I’m also planning on letting them hang out in the coop, which has a large yard – all enclosed and locked.

  29. 29.

    Major Major Major Major

    RESPITE! DUCKLINGS!!! Man am I glad to see a respite thread. I’m not having a great day. Work is really stressful this week. My team’s best engineer (and my mentor) left, so I inherited all his half-broken code branches. Blech. What a mess. So, I’m listening to “calm nintendo music” playlists on YouTube: sounds I associate with chill puzzle-solving.

    I’ve broken ground on a new novella I’m going to work on in between novel drafts. It’s a sci-fi whodunit with a murder that took place between country jurisdictions. Looking to explore the differences between ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ societal organization. Only trouble is I don’t know how to write a mystery! TaMara, I don’t suppose you have any pointers. I already know the crime and the characters and stuff.

  30. 30.

    CaseyL

    The Irish poetry reading is delightful.

    And I admit there’s an extra bit of pleasure hearing an Irish lilt from a Black person, a frisson of the unexpected. (Like the time I went to a Highland gathering, and saw Asians.  They weren’t cosplaying; they were indeed Scots.)

  31. 31.

    germy

    @Ken:

    From what I understand, squirrels are more opportunistic than hunters.  If they see a stranded baby bird or a wounded adult, they’ll pick them up.  But they won’t try to attack a strong bird.

  34. 34.

    greenergood

    Ducklings and Danes all happy! But how is my great love the Gabe coping with this duckling development? What a magnificent set of whiskers he has!

  37. 37.

    TaMara (HFG)

    @Major Major Major Major: The way I do it…and my writing partner has a completely different MO…is to know the ending and drop some clues in the first chapter, then puzzle my way out of what the hell I just wrote that is true to each character. And there have to be enough clues that the reader can figure it out – no surprise mystery killers. LOL

    I’m working on one now that I’m still trying to decide if I want to really make it clear to the reader who probably did it and the mystery is how long it takes everyone else to puzzle it out.

    My partner outlines EVERYTHING beforehand.  I just…can’t.

  42. 42.

    Major Major Major Major

    @TaMara (HFG): thanks! I’m not usually much of an outliner either, except retroactively, but I developed a taste for it recently. I’d like to put up some more mile markers (I have like four red herrings/twist beats), but… how am I supposed to know what’s in it before I write it?? Sounds like we’re similar.

    I’d love nothing more than to get a detailed outline done within the next month…

  43. 43.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Ken: yeah something like that! And the mcguffin is an old sealed document that’s slated to be released from an archive, the document is an old resource claim that would throw the border region into chaos, but we don’t know that for the first 2/3.

  48. 48.

    Emerald

    I sadly missed the introduction to the new ducklings. Did TaMara just decide to get some more, or did they waddle into her lap unexpectedly?

  50. 50.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @CaseyL:

    Charles Pierce notes:

    One of the readers was Jessica Militante, a Stanford grad, a member of the Choctaw people, and the first recipient of a new scholarship at University College-Cork dedicated to the memory of the charity of the Choctaw Nation to Ireland during the Great Famine. You may recall that, during the early days of the pandemic, when it was hitting America’s Indigenous peoples hard, there was a great movement in Ireland to help out. All of this means far more than any off-key rendition of “Danny Boy” sung between bouts of projectile vomiting outside some Irish bar in a suburban shopping mall.

    The historic, hands-across-the-sea link between Ireland and the Choctaw Nation is fascinating. I’m going to have to learn more about that.

    ETA: Link to Pierce’s column. Warning: paywalled.

    https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a35867546/st-patricks-day-choctaw-nation-ireland/

  53. 53.

    WereBear

    I don’t know what’s cuter, the ducklings or Bixby watching over them.

    I’m writing a mystery myself, and the first person choice means I must play fair: if my detective knows something, the reader does.

  55. 55.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @WereBear: One of my favorite YA fantasies is Megan Whalen Turner’s THE THIEF. It’s in first person and the narrator never lies to the reader, but he does deceive us. He says things that we take one way on a first read and see completely differently on a reread. It’s a fun book.

  60. 60.

    germy

    “I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.”
    ― Gustave Flaubert

  63. 63.

    germy

    “Better to work for yourself alone. You do as you like and follow your own ideas, you admire yourself and please yourself: isn’t that the main thing? And then the public is so stupid. Besides, who reads? And what do they read? And what do they admire?”
    ― Gustave Flaubert

  64. 64.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @WereBear:

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    I expect you are both well aware that many of the great detective novelists of England’s “Golden Age of Mystery” collaborated on several books and met regularly to exchange ideas. They came up with a lighthearted set of rules, just about every one of which was violated brilliantly and memorably by Detection Club members!

    (Sorry about the racism in Rule 5. It was written in the ‘20s or ‘30s. Not an excuse, just a fact.)

    1. The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow.

    2. All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.

    3. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.

    4. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.

    5. No chinamen must figure in the story.

    6. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.

    7. The detective himself must not himself commit the crime.

    8. The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader.

    9. The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.

    10. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.

  65. 65.

    germy

    “Books aren’t made in the way that babies are: they are made like pyramids, There’s some long-pondered plan, and then great blocks of stone are placed one on top of the other, and it’s back-breaking, sweaty, time consuming work. And all to no purpose! It just stands like that in the desert! But it towers over it prodigiously. Jackals piss at the base of it, and bourgeois clamber to the top of it, etc. Continue this comparison.”
    ― Gustave Flaubert

  66. 66.

    Alison Rose

    The pics of the cat looking at them with this………vague and nonchalant interest are so hilarious to me. Kitty looks like a scientist observing their subjects.

  68. 68.

    Ken

    @Alison Rose: Cats do nonchalance well, but I suspect underneath it’s really “If I pretend I’m not interested, I may be able to get close enough to eat them.”

  69. 69.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @MattF:

    And of course, “Ellery Queen” was a collaboration between two cousins, Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee.

    (Ellery Queen the author, not the eponymous detective character.)

  72. 72.

    CaseyL

    @Yutsano: That was wonderful, thanks for the link.  The video mentions the dwindling numbers of the Mississippi Delta Chinese community, but didn’t get into that part of the story.  I wonder if the latest generations decided to move somewhere more prosperous and more welcoming.

  74. 74.

    Ken

    @SiubhanDuinne: It’s kind of fun to imagine each of those aimed at a different writer.  So number 5 is “No Chinamen must figure in the story, Sax”  and number 1 is “must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow, Agatha.”  Think I’ll see if I can come up with a complete list this evening.

  81. 81.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Ken:

    Sayers herself (who is widely credited with drafting the rules) violated No. 4 at least once, and arguably twice. The scientific explanation bit, not the unknown poison.

  82. 82.

    Brachiator

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    @MattF:

    And of course, “Ellery Queen” was a collaboration between two cousins, Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee.

    Dick Francis collaborated a great deal with his wife, Mary, and later with his son Felix.

  87. 87.

    Yutsano

    @CaseyL: ​ Some young’uns moving out, some the young’uns being exposed to media that tampers their accents. It’s kind of sad how people hide it. I have a friend from the backwoods* of Georgia who has made it a point to mask his accent. I appreciate his work, but I wonder if something is lost.

    *I’m not kidding. He’s like about 20 miles or so from Dahlonega. That way up north country Georgia!

  88. 88.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Brachiator:

    There’s a series of three mysteries (collectively known as “A Very English Mystery”) written by a mother and son team. If memory serves, Elizabeth Edmondson wrote the first, they shared pretty equally on the second, and after Edmondson died her son, Anselm Audley, wrote the third and final volume.

  89. 89.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Yutsano:

    I’m not kidding. He’s like about 20 miles or so from Dahlonega. That way up north country Georgia!

    “There’s gold in them thar hills!”

  92. 92.

    JoyceH

    Does anyone else remember the dime stores selling chicks and ducklings around Easter? They’d have these little pens in the regular aisles and all these baby birds would mill around and cheep. I’m glad they stopped doing that, because of course the chicks and ducklings always died. Every year my sister and I would beg and plead for a chick or duckling (they went for like fifty cents apiece), and the folks would always turn us down. Later when I realized that the birdies always died, I was glad they didn’t let us have any.

    I only know of ONE of those dime store purchases that ever survived – our next door neighbors had a full grown duck that started out as a dime store duckling. It was pretty aggressive, too – when Mom would go out to the back yard to hang up the drying, the duck would run over into our yard and BILL her.

    (Hey, Tamara, do duck bites hurt? Mom was kind of scared of the duck, said ‘it BIT me!’)

  93. 93.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Ken:

    I have vaguely heard of/seen references to him but have never read anything he wrote. Worthwhile, or simply a curiosity?

  94. 94.

    StringOnAStick

    I once saw a wild Mallard who would ride down some minor river rapids, quacking the whole way, eddy out, then fly back/water run like they do to the top of the rapids, and hop in again for another ride.  He couldn’t interest any other of the observing ducks in his new water park ride, but it went on long enough that I finally had to get moving so I didn’t see how long her kept doing it.  Ducks clearly understand the concept of having a good time!

  96. 96.

    TaMara (HFG)

    @JoyceH: Yes, they have ridges (teeth) on their bills. And they are STRONG! So if they get you right, it can really hurt. See Scout in the video – one of them got her toe pretty good.

  98. 98.

    debbie

    Hope this thread is still active because I’ve been saving this for a respite thread:

    once again. i am asking. for a kiss on my forehead
    — Thoughts of Dog® (@dog_feelings) March 17, 2021

    Some very, very sweet photos.

  99. 99.

    JoyceH

    @TaMara (HFG): ​
     

    Awww! They lil wingsies! Interesting about the bite hurting, though – the bills look so blunt and harmless. We used to rather tease Mom about being scared of a duck. I’d apologize to her, but she died over 20 years ago.

  100. 100.

    Ken

    @SiubhanDuinne: Curiosity, I would say.  The stories are chiefly interesting because he was one of the first detective fiction writers. There’s not really a mystery with clues, more like a police procedural, and there’s no question of the reader being able to work out the solution.

  103. 103.

    SpongeBobtheBuilder

    Thank you for the duckling video on your site–I needed that this afternoon!

  106. 106.

    JanieM

    @SiubhanDuinne:  The currently active mystery writer Charles Todd is a mother and son team.

    Emma Lathen is/was also a team of two

    ETA: oops, I missed the earlier Emma Lathen mention.

  108. 108.

    Zelma

    @JoyceH:

    When I was in 2nd or 3rd grade, a classmate (Michael Silverman, I don’t believe I remember that), gave me two chicks for Easter.  We kept them in a box and then penned them in the kitchen.  We called them Pete and Repeat since one followed the other.  They grew and they grew and they grew.  When they finally got big enough to jump the gate and we would find them in the living room, my dad found a farm where we took them.  We followed their adventures for a couple of years.  Repeat got run over by a car but Pete apparently lived a happy life.  Or at least so my parents told me.  They were my first pets.

  109. 109.

    Miss Bianca

    @SiubhanDuinne: Aww, that was lovely.

    And ducklings!

    Now I’m feeling better. Yesterday was a bad day, and I still had a bunch of angry/disgusted feels left over from yesterday roiling about today, but ducklings and Yeats have chilled me right out.

  110. 110.

    J R in WV

    @Major Major Major Major: ​

     

    Ooh, the magazine I Assistant Edit got nominated for a Nebula!

    OK, NOW I’m jealous… ;-) Not really, congratulations on the nom, hope you guys nail it down!

    ETA: Baby Ducks are great, esp. with the giant dogs, etc. Mystery rules, rule, also. Love Ms Sayers’s work, read it every couple of years, on the shelf by my right hand, though I would have to get our of the chair…

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