Dixie Ducklings

[stevenpiziks]

Yesterday (Saturday) evening, my husband and I were driving on the Dixie Highway toward Clarkston when traffic suddenly slowed. When we got closer, we saw cars crooked in the lanes and thought there'd been an accident. When we got closer still, we saw the cause was actually a mother duck and six ducklings. She had taken it into her feathery head to bring the kids across the road. Cars had stopped in both the east-bound lanes. But the mother duck was determined to keep on going, and she headed for the west-bound lanes, where cars continued to whizz by, unconcerned.

She and the babies stood in the turning lane for a moment, then she started across. The next car in the west-bound lane saw them and hit the brakes just in time to avoid hitting her. Cars behind the driver screeched to a stop. The mother duck waddled determinedly toward the curb, with the trusting ducklings right behind her.

A car bore down on them, and then managed to stop, but the SUV behind was following too closely. At the last second, the driver swerved. The SUV jumped the curb and stopped on the grassy border, gouging out ruts and narrowly avoiding a crash into the wall of a motel cabin.

The mother duck clambered up the curb and the ducklings scrambled up after her. all of them unharmed.