My husband built me a koi pond for our front yard about a year and a half ago. Since then I’ve been able to enjoy watching my fish grow from abut 2″ to more than 12″ each. They are lovely. Just yesterday, 2 mallard ducks decided to join us in our yard. They are a beautiful pair, calm as could be, letting us come within a foot of them with no problem. I have a bird feeder in my yard, so I grabbed the bag of seed and scattered some on the driveway for them. The sprinklers were on, so they enjoyed getting wet and sipping in the puddles.

Then they began to show interest in the koi pond. Uh oh. I wondered if that was a good idea. Would they scare my fish? Could they harm them? The fish are almost as big as they are, so I didn’t figure they’d eat them, but would they hurt them in some way? Luckily, the drake just jumped on the side, looked for awhile and then waddled away. But today, they were back again, and this time, they thought they’d take a little swim. The koi don’t seem to mind, but I was concerned about possible parasites or bacteria from wherever else they’d been. I did what every rational person does at a time like this: I googled it. “Ducks in my koi pond.” And of course, I came up with as many opinions as there were answers. Tame ducks are OK, but stay away from the wild ones (that should be true of our friends in life, too, shouldn’t it? haha). Ducks add interest to your pond, let them stay! If you attracted ducks, you’ve done something right!

I’ve decided to let nature take its course. They’ve already helped me out by eating the pink apple snail eggs that tend to line the edges of the pond, so that saves me from having to scrape them off. And they’re just so darn cute! My husband is hoping they’ll build and nest and we’ll have babies eventually. I’m not sure whether that will happen or not, but for now, we’re enjoying the company. And yes, that means all of us.

My question is: why are they suddenly finding our yard attractive? Where did they come from? Will they be sticking around? If only we could speak duck.

Sometimes we all find ourselves in circumstances different than what we’re used to. What’s that saying? Like ducks out of water? We’re uncomfortable, we’re frightened, we’re unsure of what we’re doing. Sometimes we just have to find
what’s familiar. Is that some water over there? It’s smaller than what we’re used to, but let’s just go with it. The fish look pretty friendly. Maybe someone will toss us some seed every now and again.

Eventually, wherever we are, we will settle in and life will become normal again. New normal, maybe, but normal nevertheless. Whether we stay in that new place, move on to another or go back from whence we came, God sees us, He goes ahead of us, and He knows what we need.