Make Way for Ducklings
I looked out the window this morning around 7:15 a.m. and saw our Mama duck waddling around with 9 little fuzzy balls of fluff in tow. She was searching urgently for a way out of the fenced yard. I called Annette out and we opened the gate and gently shepherded them out to the front. Then it was a 1/2 mile march with them to the Yahara River during the morning commute. Traffic was heavy (for Stoughton) so I am so glad that we were here to play crossing guard. We had to stop cars a few times and it was a bit nerve-wracking but they made it safely and really very quickly. At one point we lost them when they beelined through a couple yards and they had to jump off a 2.5 ft. retaining wall before crossing one of the busiest streets in town. It reminded me of the book, Make Way for Ducklings that I read when I was a kid. Does anyone else remember this book? Dawn?
Make Way for Ducklings, published in 1941 was the winner of the Caldecott Medal in 1942. In his acceptance speech, McCloskey explained his motivation for the story. While attending the Vesper George Art School in the early 1930s, he would spend time in the Public Garden feeding the ducks. After some time away, he returned to Boston to paint a mural and created a draft of the book after inspiration from May Massee. To better illustrate the story, McCloskey spent time at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, visited an ornithologist, and eventually brought home for models six ducklings to live in his studio at 280 West 12th Street, apartment 4C, in New York’s West Village.
Here is a map of the route that the mother duck chose to lead her ducklings to water. It was a pretty direct route and the instinctual sense of direction is incredible considering that in previous trips, she went by air.
The ducks route is in red. The blue dotted line is what Google maps suggested. She had other ideas.
I can record video on my new camera so I took this little clip of the babies being led out of the yard by their mom. Pretty cute. Kind of sad to see them go. Maybe she’ll be back next year…
And here they are, safely in the water. Whew!
Yes, I do remember the book, not the whole story but the cover is very familiar. I love the pictures of the ducklings, they are so cute. My chicks aren’t very cute any more, they are getting bigger and losing most of their fluff.