Critter Capers
by Margaret Stinson
After months of pestering the Chief Administrator of this website, I have finally been granted a by-line. The object of this series of articles is to relate - hopefully - amusing and anecdotal stories of animals that have touched my life. It is the intention to post one story per week for purposes of entertainment and edification. Readers are also encouraged to submit their own amusing and anecdotal stories of animals that have touched their lives, and once subjected to editing, said accounts may also be posted on this site.
Readers may contact me by e-mail at: Margaret@worldscutestanimals.com.
My debut story happened quite recently, in Calgary, the day after the wedding of my one and only daughter. The family was dining at a very delicious restaurant on 16th Avenue North - a.k.a. the number One Highway. After dinner and during conversations and coffee, my son ducked out to the SUV for the diaper bag or something and encountered a strange sight in the parking lot of the eating establishment. After announcing the strangeness outside to those assembled inside, he swooped up his daughter and went back outside - with me excitedly trotting behind.
Three humane individuals had cornered a mother duck and her eight to 10 ducklings in the parking lot. The ducks had apparently been following or leading these three down one of the streets and encountering 16th Avenue had decided to cross the road to see what was on the other side. As nothing could be of such interest south of 16th to warrant being splattered all over the highway, these two lovely ladies and one gentleman had shepherded the brood away from the road in order to prevent the impending tragedy. Soon other interested individuals congregated, a strategy was developed, boxes were procured from parked cars and the restaurant kitchen, and the gentleman - having had prior experience with ducks - cornered the family by the industrial-sized green garbage bin. He then extricated the quivering mother duck and put her in a box - into which my engineer son immediately and professionally carved a breathing hole. The male good Samaritan next proceeded to pick up each little ducking and deposit him or her in another box - which my engineer son did not have to alter as this box came off the factory floor with sufficient breathing holes.
I was having a difficult time preventing myself from picking up the ducklings as they were at that moment, the Cutest Things I Had Ever Seen In My Entire Life. Overcoming my instincts to cuddle anything mammalian or furry, I enviously watched as the last duckling was deposited in box number two. The threesome then gathered up the boxes, put them in a car and proceeded to drive the captured critters to a inner-city lake where they would be released back into their natural habitat. Waving fond good-byes, we went back into the restaurant to relay the events to the family members who had remained conversing at their chairs. I was quite annoyed at myself for not having a camera with which I could have captured the preceding events for posterity, but then became quite content that I at least had had a part in the rescue and that there will still many good people in the world who would put themselves out to protect and aid those wonderful creatures of the wild that make our lives so full.
