Adventures At The Pond

My husband’s youngest sister has lived in the same lovely Cleveland-area suburban neighborhood for twenty years now. We’ve visited many times and strolled often along the sidewalks and around the community pool.

But it was only this past weekend that the thought dawned on me to walk my dog over to the neighborhood pond.

Gracie quickly went all in with my idea. As usual, when she is presented with any body of water larger than, well, her body, she rushed right in, lay down in the shallows and began lapping up the water with gusto.

She doesn”t really care to swim per se, but boy, does Gracie love to lie in water and lap.

Now this particular pond is well populated with ducks and Canada geese. For the most part, the water fowl kept their distance from us. Each day, they waddled out from under their shade tree as Gracie happily approached, and paddled off to the far side of the pond.

But on one of the days we visited, a small contingent of female ducks organized a counterattack. Almost in military formation, they pursued my amiable redhead, quacking their indignation and clearly attempting to scare her off their turf.

You can see the effect of their intimidation campaign on Gracie.

Ha.

Because there is nothing - not even a fleet of angry mama ducks -  that is going to ruin my dog’s happy adventures at the pond.