Day: 2020-09-09

More ducklings day 29 (start of week 5)

As mentioned earlier, we had to evacuate the homestead due to a nearby wildfire. While the older ducks can fend for themselves, the newer ducklings are too young, so we decided to take them to Mom’s place, along with our dog Rory and two pet cats Pippin and Paladin.

Here are the ducklings in a container in the truck, along with their food. This container has a rough hole and mesh in the lid, made previously as a chick brooder:

Ducklings in the truck

I kept the ducklings in the containers in the garage overnight, three in each, along with water and food:

Ducklings in containers

They were rather messy in the morning:

Messy ducklings

Mom set up a trailer as an enclosure for the ducklings, even with the same kind of paint tray pool as they have at home:

Ducklings in trailer

They were eager to bathe:

Bathing

Looking damp but more clean:

Ducklings

Scratching in the food dish:

Scratching in the food dish

Flapping little wings:

Flapping

Jenn and Mom went out to get groceries plus some chicken wire for a cover to protect the ducklings, and straw bedding:

Chicken wire cover and straw

We added a bigger pool for the ducklings:

Bigger pool

Bigger pool

This evening I fully covered the trailer with tarps, and will leave them there overnight. It’ll get a little cooler overnight than they’re used to, but they should be fine if they snuggle together. I hope.

Wildfire evacuation!

(I posted this as three posts on my personal blog, but decided it’d make sense to collect them into a single post here.)

Jenn and I are taking a vacation this week, taking a break from social media and big screens, relaxing and playing board games and such:

Board games

Or at least that’s how the week started… then the entire west coast caught on fire.

We (and most of the county) lost power in the afternoon, due to high winds toppling trees onto hundreds of power lines. Including one of our trees, with a plume of smoke in the background:

Smoke and downed tree

We continued to play games by lantern:

Playing games by lantern

But as we were about to head to bed, we got level 2 alerts on our phones, warning us to prepare to evacuate, as wildfires spread closer to us:

Level 2 alert

We packed our bags and prepared to evacuate, but agonized about whether to leave immediately, or wait and see, since our plan was to drive to Mom’s place, three hours north. Meanwhile, a glow of fire a few miles away:

Glow of fire a few miles away

Ultimately we decided that better safe than sorry was a sensible policy, and loaded up both the car and truck, with our dog Rory and the two pet cats Pippin and Paladin in the car, and the six ducklings in the truck, since they couldn’t fend for themselves for more than a day:

Ducklings in the truck

The older ducks and feral cats can fend for themselves for as long as needed. The chickens will be fine for a few days, assuming the homestead doesn’t burn.

We hit the road, and arrived at Mom’s place around 03:00, tired but safe.

This morning, we watched the evacuation zones expanding to include our homestead, so we would have had to leave this morning if we hadn’t around midnight:

Expanding evacuation zones

Expanding evacuation zones

Expanding evacuation zones

I’ll follow up later with my usual daily duckling post… a bit less usual this time.