We lost our ducks, Lemon and Meringue, last Tuesday, May 18th, 2021. Well, we lost Lemon for sure. I found her dead on the sidewalk across the street. We haven’t seen Meringue since.

I was not aware they were ready to fly yet. They never had shown any indication of being ready to fly or trying to fly. But I think that is what happened. They tried to fly, probably flew a little, fell, repeated, etc.. But from the looks of Lemon’s body when I found her, her neck was snapped. So I’m assuming she was in a tree or a high elevation and just couldn’t fly anymore ore fell out of the tree, and snapped her neck when she hit the sidewalk. It was heartbreaking to find her like that.

It was weird because I saw them at 2am that same morning. Our dog, Abby, was tap-dancing on the hardwood floor downstairs because she had to go pee, so I got up and took her outside. When I took her out both ducks were right there, awake and walking around, everything was fine. I get up early, at 5:30am, and when I opened the blinds I didn’t see them. I figured they were cuddled in the bushes underneath the window which they often did. At 6am I still hadn’t seen them, so I went outside to feed them, and they were gone. There were no signs of ‘foul play’, or that they had been attacked. I walked up and down our block with their bag of meal-worms because that will always get them to come to you. But they did not come.

We always figured they would fly away at some point, just not so soon. Again, there were zero indications of being ready to fly that I had seen, and I spent a good amount of time with them and watching them. So we thought they flew away, somewhere close, and were fine. And who knows, at that point they could have been. But, I had to start work and couldn’t spend all morning looking for them. At 3pm when I was finishing up work, I took another walk to look for them on another street behind us, and there was Lemon. Just laying there dead. Those two ducks were inseparable, so I’m very surprised I did not find Meringue nearby. Despite Lemon being dead, she looked OK, as in she had not been attacked, preyed upon, or hurt by any other animal. It had to be an accident. She just wasn’t ready to fly yet, but she was trying, unsuccessfully 🙁

As for Meringue, who knows. I figured he would have came back by now if he were still alive. I would like to think he is still alive, but I have no idea. The thought does make me feel better though.

RIP Lemon & Meringue. 3/15/21 – 5/18/21