I spent about an hour one day, my daughter was a toddler, so I was focusing on her a lot, trying to rescue a duck family.
Ducks leave their water source to nest, as a protective measure. That crazy girl must have chosen her location very late at night, when all was closed and traffic was not an issue. She was attempting to get eight chicks across a sizeable portion of a busy parking lot of a strip mall, including a packed McDs drive thru. Beyond that was four busy lanes of traffic.
I watched a lot of dodging and narrow misses just to go ten feet.
I was getting around fairly well then on crutches. I made a choice. I had an empty back pack meant to carry home what I had set out to buy.
I decided to round up chicks, and put them in my backpack. Being a mother, I knew that duck would follow the sound of those chicks to the fires if hell if she had to.
Catch a chick, go six feet to catch up with the others, catch another chick. Most of the progress occurred in the drive thru. I finally had all but one crafty little dodger. I decided to let her take her chances with that one. I got to the corner where we could cross those lanes of traffic to the park where her intended pond was waiting. I waited for the light to change, which was only there for turning traffic. There was no pedestrian crossing there. Mama trampled the grass in anxiety, focused on my chirping backpack. When traffic was stopped, I began to cross, knowing we would never make it before the light changed again.
In one lane, there was a delivery truck. He saw duck and one baby following me. He must have also seen my backpack pulsing as chicks scrambled to find a way out. He leaned forward over his steering wheel. His expression was priceless, like an unexpected break he badly needed. His flashers came on. He was committed to waiting. The light changed. My little girl was walking beside me, holding up her hands in both directions like a traffic cop. Nobody honked, and flashers came on everywhere. Nobody was going to press us, and the mama stuck with us like a well trained dog. Once we were across, duck headed for a chainlink fence. She had a crawl spot she obviously knew well. By now she must have known we were helping, because she hit that crawl spot like a bullet. I grabbed the fence to lower myself, and my daughter and I pulled chicks from the pack and set them under the fence fast as we could go. They all heard mama duck’s frantic quacking and raced through the grass toward her.
I wasn’t missing work, but I had delayed my shopping, and several motorists were content to spare some of their time.
I did sacrifice my backpack. I took one look inside, and tossed it in the first garbage can I reached. There was a thrift store nearby. I got a new pack, and finished my shopping trip.