DUCK!

Sheesh! I got in trouble yesterday for not posting about the darn ducks.

Dunno, maybe this baseball banquet I'm organizing all by myself that's being held tonight for 650 people got in my way. Sorry!

So....ducks....with all this build up from Mike I hope I don't disappoint

Watching those swimmers head out into Anchor Bay was like watching salmon swimming upstream...all the splashing and thrashing was kind of amusing. That picture of the bouys by the way was taken from the end of the dock with no zoom....about 20 yards in front of where the actual start line was. It was as daunting looking in real life as it appears in the picture.

It was a windy morning so the waves in the bay were a little rough and from what Mike said there was a bit of a current so going out was a struggle. We watched about 10 or so people not even make it to the first bouy. The power boat came by and dropped swim noodles in the water for them. Before the boat headed to them Cindy looked out and said Hmmm, those people don't seem to be going anywhere....I guess that's when the boat noticed too.

The swimmers were starting to make their way back to shore. We heard some people yelling to the first few out that they were only about 5 minutes behind their projected time and they should make it up on the bike. Right then we truly realized how rough the water was.

While the swimmers straggled in we noticed a mama duck with her 2 babies swimming around just off the beach. Some of the brilliant spectators started yelling at her to move out of the area, she'd get run over; like she understood. That just caused her to turn and start heading out into the water, into incoming swimmers. All we could imagine then was someone in their swimming zone reaching out a hand and hitting a duck...that would not be a pretty sight.

Suddenly mama noticed the incoming swimmers and started to swim to the right...into more swimmers and then left...into more swimmers and a sea wall. She panicked and started for shore. The whole time the babies were with her until she suddenly made a turn. One baby followed, the other went the other way. At this point...screw the swimmers we were worried about that baby. It kept diving under the water for long periods and coming up 5 feet or so from where it went under. Being under the water was even more scary cuz then we couldn't even warn the swimmers to it's location. Mama was safely off to the side freaking out, spreading her wings and squaking. Baby surfaced next to the sea wall and then wound up going under the dock and way out of harms way. But mama had no idea where baby was. Again, the spectators started yelling to her that baby was on the other side of the dock...again...do you think she understood?

Apparently we are a short attention span crowd because the ducks were forgotten when one guy got about 15 feet from shore, tried to stand up and almost face planted in 2 feet of water. He was white as a ghost and didn't look too good. He kept struggling to get above a kneeling position in the water. I went to one of the teenage volunteers and told him to get medical help. As he stood there not quite sure what to do a couple of spectators waded in and brought him to the beach. He wound up being taken away by ambulance. Mack stayed back and monitored the situation for us while we watched Mike head off on the biking leg of the tri.

There you go, the story of the ducks. I told you it wasn't a huge deal.