we fEEd them, and it is cOOl.

In the back of our house, we have three small ponds. One of these ponds is a natural hot spring and never freezes. The other two, serve as drainage to the spring, and they freeze every winter. The hot spring pond, provides a nice place for the ducks to live. We had about 20 mallards living back there all winter. They became our little pets. Even though they are totally wild ducks, they are super smart, and I must say easily trained. Everyday when I opened my curtains, they would fly over to my backyard, and we would feed them. It didn't start out this way. We have a local duck that is here year round. His name is Edward, and he can't fly. I think someone, long ago clipped his wings, and even if the wings weren't clipped, he is just too fat to fly. So Edward served as a ring leader to the rest of the group. We have been throwing bread out to him every so often, and he being completely tame would waddle over and eat. So I don't know if because he was the biggest, the ducks deemed him their leader, or what but, we would throw out the bread and Edward would waddle over like usual, and the rest of the ducks wised up and would follow suit. Then the ducks would see all of us standing on our landing throwing bread out and they realized they could fly over and beat Edward to the goods. We would see poor Edward running as fast as he could, it was sad and yet, really funny. Finally, all we had to do was open our curtains, and the ducks would fly over and land with a great big face plant in the snow, and eat until they were full, or the bread was gone. This ritual kept me and the kids amused most of the winter. It was a bright spot to the endless gray days.