This evening when the sun started to set, my mother and I came upon a mother duck and her two ducklings. Where I live, it’s common to find ducks, ducklings, rabbits, squirrels, and lizards. Anyways, I have an affinity to ducklings after rescuing them a couple of years back with my family (check out the post HERE) so I pay close attention whenever I encounter them. And watching them, I found it odd to see that there were only two ducklings trailing behind their mother.

I also spotted a great white bird resembling a heron lurking nearby.

Perhaps it was a heron. But I can’t tell as I am no expert on birds). And from the look of it and from my past memory of witnessing a cruel Canadian goose murder a duckling in another pond, I had this premonition of imminent danger for the little ducklings.

Ducklings Attacked

My fears were realized when the heron-like bird closed in on the two ducklings bobbing around. The mother duck fluttered its wings in protest or perhaps to make itself look bigger to scare off the predator. The details of their interaction I could not understand; but I could tell clearly who were the prey and who was the predator.

Now, one might say it isn’t right to interfere with the world of nature, as animals eating and getting eaten is the way of nature.

But from my understanding, human interference is also part of nature, as humans are part of the ecosystem as well.

And it just didn’t seem right to do nothing while the mother duck and her ducklings got attacked by the mean-looking heron that was inching closer and closer.

So I yelled at the thing and chased after it when it got too close to the scared ducklings. But the heron wouldn’t fly away from the pond: no matter how much I ran and yelled at it, it would dart away or fly a little bit only to come back to the pond. It wasn’t going anywhere. It wasn’t giving up on what it set its eyes on.

I did all I could to condemn the heron, running at it to scare it off.

But the sun sank lower and lower behind the horizon and I had to go. I had to leave the mother duck and her two ducklings hovering in a corner of the pond with the heron still in their vicinity. What became of them, I don’t know. But I have a terrible feeling that the heron got its way.

World of Survival

As I sit here writing, I cannot help but think how ruthless the world is.

In this world, there is no mercy for the little ducklings or any other preys that are at the wrong place at the wrong time. No matter how little or young they are. There is no mercy for little baby animals who meet weak parents or incompetent, foolish parents who lead them to dangerous places (e.g. drainage ditches, areas of lakes where there are hostile, cruel geese & etc.). Same goes for people. If one fails to develop necessary skills for survival and/or success, it’s a tough, tough world out there. (And instead of predators like herons, we have conmen, cheaters, criminals, immoral beings and many more that make life much more difficult than it already is). Plus, there is no mercy for actions as well as inactions: there are consequences no matter what. Our world, like the world of animals, is a world of predators and prey.

It is a world of survival.

Update #1: I’ve revisited the pond a few days later. To my grief, I only found a single duck like the image shown above. (The duck shown above is NOT the duck I saw). I have no way to tell, but by the look and timing of it, the lonely duck that I saw about two days after the said event seemed like the mother duck. It was floating in the exact pond where the horrible event probably took place. The female duck was motionless. A couple of days later, I saw it start to move a little. Now, it is no longer at the pond. It was heartbreaking.

Update #2: Today on October 7th, I spotted the heron-like creature again! It may be the same heron that attacked the ducklings. It may not be. But the bird looks very similar to the one I saw attacking the ducklings:

P.S. Here is a 2002 journal article that explores the very topic of interfering with nature: “Why Not Interfere with Nature?” by Mark A. Michael. I wish I were in school again to read the full article!