The lurking enemy and the obvious threat

Deidre was concerned. The world that had always seemed to be quite reasonable was turning out to be a very difficult place to live. She had always dreamed of raising her ducklings in the same place that she had lived: feeding at people's houses and swimming in the estuary.

But the dream and the reality were very different things.

It seemed that the place that she remembered was more hostile than she ever imagined. Here she was trying to get enough food to feed her babies, and she seemed to be having to spend all her time fighting off threats. She started with a large brood. 17 ducklings. More than any of the other ducks had. She had been very proud of them, but their numbers were decreasing. Some of them had been injured, and unable to keep up. Some of them had wondered too close to the neighbourhood cats. 2 of them had been run over. She was down to 6. 11 of her babies gone.

There were threats everywhere. Cats and dogs, a hawk that flew past from time to time. You could hardly leave the ducklings for a minute: they would walk too close to a large bush and a cat would jump out; or they would fall down a drain and break their legs. That had been the hardest to handle. She was powerless to help, just had to watch the poor little thing die. At least she managed to fight off the ginger cat with no tail. It had broken her leg, but she managed to stop it from taking a third duckling.

So the best option was to stay on the short lawns. Sometimes people brought them bread to eat, and it meant that she could see the cats coming. She knew that there was one in the long grass at the edge of the lawn, but her chicks were staying close to her, and as long as she kept an eye out it wouldn't be able to get them.

And here was another threat. It was Jack, one of the loner drakes. She wasn't sure what he wanted, but it can't have been good.

Jack was a young drake, full of bravado and bluster. He strutted round trying to look like he owned the place. Secretly he was probably disappointed that he didn't have a mate, but on the outside all he had was swagger. The young drakes were always unpredictable, and Jack was no exception. Deidre had seen him sitting on the roof of houses, just watching. It always looked like he was waiting for his chance to pounce. It was like he was aware that at some time soon an opportunity was coming, and he did not want to miss out.

What the opportunity was she was not sure. She wasn't sure that he knew either, but she wasn't about to let herself or her ducklings become a victim of his quest to climb the social ladder.

The first option was to hope that he went away. But that was not to be. He spotted her, and started to waddle in her direction. Deidre started to think quickly. Her instincts told her that nothing good could come out of this. He might be about to steal her food. He might be about to attack her ducklings. What should she do?

The ducklings were too small and slow to be able to run away effectively, and after the incident with the cat Deidre was injured, and unlikely to be much good in a fight.

Then Jack started to make threatening noises. A low pitched repetitive quack. Deidre knew what that meant: danger! She wasn't going to let it be danger for her and her little ones. Deidre puffed up her feathers, and got aggressive. Quacking at top volume, she ran after Jack waggling her beak in a threatening manner.

And it worked.

Jack backed off, breaking into a fly and disappearing.

And as that happened the cat jumped out from the bushes and took another duckling. The cat that Jack had been trying to warn her about.