On The Loose~

“It’s out!  One of ‘em is out!”

I whipped around from the counter where I was mixing tempera paint for the next project.  Sure enough, “it” was out.  One of our fine feather friends was darting around the classroom quacking as loud as could be.  Well, quacking isn’t the exact sound it made.  It was more of a peep similar to chicks, but none the less it was LOUD and the tone was alarming.

We incubated duck eggs for 28 days before they began to hatch.  This experience is thrilling for all members of the school house, regardless of grade or age.  My colleagues even stomp down to the primary wing to check out the eggs and ducklings.  In the end we had seven of the eggs hatch in the last week and it has been non-stop enthusiasm ever since the first egg cracked.

So, here we are, twenty four humans, held captive by the lone duckling on the loose.  Zoooooooom, it raced under a table and hid next to the leg of a six year old.  Screams and shrieks from the student body alerted the lone duckling that trouble lurked, and it was off…..This time is stopped, but only for a moment, near the kidney bean table before zooming over to my desk.  By now I was “shushing” the student body and on all fours crawling around trying to sneak up on this bandit.  My shushing spooked the duckling and it was off again.  This time it didn’t stop racing around and around. This delighted the twenty-three Kindergarteners! Or, maybe it was their teacher chasing the thing around and around that was most entertaining.  This bird was running around the brooder and tub we had made into a make-shift swimming pool peeping its head off!  If that wasn’t enough, the six other ducklings were squeaking and peeping at the top of their lungs from the swimming pool as if to let the bandit know he was close and should re-join the group.

Finally, by some stroke of luck I managed to capture the lone bird and re-united him with his siblings.  In an instant the peeping stopped and the swimming commenced.  This wasn’t the first time I had broken a sweat in Kindergarten chasing things, but usually it is a five year old early in the year who decides school isn’t the place for them and they attempt a mad get away on day three or four of the year.  This was a first.