And inside the nest were the eggs she had laid.
And so began a unique nearly month-long nature lesson for one Shadow Lane family.
The husband, Roger Beaulieu, returned to the house and told his wife, Cathy, what he had found.
Cathy Beaulieu decided to call someone who could tell her what to do. Her first call was to Cheryl Gagnon, the town’s animal control officer, who said not to disturb the nest for fear the momma duck would abandon it.
Beaulieu next contacted the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, which referred her to the Bureau of Natural Resources.
Natural Resources repeated Gagnon’s advice “to leave her alone and just give her time and space,” Beaulieu said.
But the time did pose a problem of sorts: Natural Resources said it would take 24-26 days for the eggs to hatch once the Momma Duck sat on them full time.
“They told us to be patient, and we did just that,” Beaulieu said. “We didn’t want to harm the little ducklings.”
The nest was inside the fence that surrounds the family’s in-ground pool.
“I turned this into a life/nature for my two children,” Beaulieu said, referring to her daughter Lillian, 9.5 and her son Joshua, 7.5.
“We checked on the Momma Duck from outside the fence every morning and night, and took pictures of the progress,” Beaulieu said.
But then the temperature shot up dramatically into the 90s during one weekend in May. Naturally enough, Lillian wanted the pool open.
But that would have meant displacing the momma duck - and perhaps creating the potential for a disaster for the not-yet-hatched ducklings.
Joshua was entranced by the whole process. After reviewing the situation, Lillian “came around,” Beaulieu said.
Fortunately the mini-heat wave was short-lived.
Nineteen days later, on June 4, the first beak poked out from an egg.
“The kids were super excited,” Beaulieu said. “They couldn’t wait to come home from school to, hopefully, see the duckies.”
Their patience was rewarded, with the appearance of six ducklings.
Joshua had even come up with names for the ducklings: Lightning, Stormy, Rainy, Sunshine, Thunder and Cloudy.
But on Wednesday, when she stopped home after attending Lillian’s spring concert at the Woodside Intermediate School, out of the corner of her eye Beaulieu saw what looked like “a large leaf fall into the pool cover.”
What she had seen wasn’t a leaf, but one of the newly-hatched ducklings who were all swimming in the rainwater that had collected in the pool cover.
“They were so cute!” Beaulieu remembered.
But, she also realized there was no way for the ducklings to get out of the pool cover.
The Beaulieus had partially drained the pool over the winter, and so the cover sagged in the middle creating a deep “V” in the center.
And so Beaulieu placed another call to Gagnon. Within minutes, Gagnon had arrived on scene.
After surveying the situation, Gagnon went to her carry-all blue van and returned with net she keeps in the truck.
“Using the net, I was able to scoop out the babies,” Gagnon said.
The mother was close by and, “clearly agitated, was quacking loudly,” Gagnon said.
But because she was inside the fence, “I was able to catch her, too,” Gagnon said.
Gagnon took the ducks to a nearby stream where she set them loose upon the water.
“The last I saw of them, the mother swimming away and the ducklings were all trailing after the mom,” Gagnon said.
Gagnon had nothing but praise for the Beaulieaus, for their patience in allowing for the mini-drama to play out uninterrupted for nearly a month.
More than that, “To have the children in the house who were able to watch this whole process for almost a month was quite a learning experience,” Police Chief Anthony J. Salvatore said.
Beaulieu concurred.
“It was really exciting to see them hatch,” she said. “We may not have been able to open our pool as early as we wanted. But really, to see nature in action from the front row is pretty cool.”
(Middletown Press - June 9, 2013)
