Why does this mamma duck escort her baby ducklings across the hallway of a nursing home every year? To get to the pond on the other side of the building!
Although most fairytales exist in an imaginary world, a patient care center in Canandaigua, New York, has experienced their own version of a fairytale every Spring since 1995. For close to 25 years now, a different mamma duck has been showing up at their doorsteps with her babies waiting to get in. Why, you ask? She knows that there is a pond on the other side of the building and, the easiest and quickest way to get there is to cut straight through the building.
via Daily Mail UK
The nursing home was built in 1995, so we can only assume that ducks have been coming to this pond for even longer. After the nursing home was built, however, the ducks were faced with a dilemma: find another way to get their babies to the pond or find a different one to go to. By the looks of it, some decided to find a solution to stay. And we think you'll agree with us that they came up with a pretty creative solution: simply walking through the building!
Judging by how nonchalant the mother duck and her hatchlings are when walking down the hallway, they don't seem to care that there are peope around. It is definitely an interesting sight to see, too. To get the staff's attention, the mother duck will peck her beak on the glass of the door as if to say, "Let us through, please!".
Source: Thompson Health/Facebook
In 2019, one mother duck brought along with her 13 ducklings; it's the most anyone has ever counted! With numbers like these, staff members do what they can to keep the little baby ducklings from wandering away from their mother. Sometimes they have to get creative, though, using signs to move/point them in the right direction.
Source: Thompson Health/Facebook
The most fascinating thing about these mother ducks is that they all come from the mallard family. Mallard ducks are especially known for being courageous, so it comes as no surprise to us why walking through a halllway full of humans is no big deal. On the nursing home's Facebook page, Thompson Health, the staff has stated, "Every year, during this period, a mamma duck chooses our property to lay her eggs in and raise her little family of ducklings. She lets us know when she's ready to take them to our pond, which is located on the other side of the building, by pecking her beak against the glass of the building's doors. Once this happens, we know that Spring has offically arrived, bringing with it this wonderful annual ritual."
This annual ritual is seriously the cutest and proof that fairytales do exist!
