“Build it and they will come,” she said, noting that the area also is populated by a squirrel that builds a summer home in a tree off campus and by a mother duck who has returned for the second year to hatch a brood.
“I knew it was the same duck as last year because as soon as she got here, she started walking along the window ledges,” Nuttall said, from which students threw food out to her last year.
But the seagull, a permanent resident of the courtyard because of a bum wing, took exception to her return and kept her from laying eggs near the pond. So Mama Duck nested in another courtyard nearby, separated from the wildlife habitat by a hallway and two locked doors.
There’s a bush in that courtyard underneath the window of Room 117, occupied by math teacher Kelly Engle, who heard an unusual rustling on the morning of April 21.
“I had seen her (Mama Duck) out there about two weeks before,” Engle said, “but I thought she’d made a nest over by the pond.”
When the 14 ducklings hatched, Mama Duck started pacing, apparently worried about her babies’ need for water. So Nuthall and her Wildlife Ambassadors Club made a human fence in the hallway from one door to the other so that Mama Duck could lead the brood to the courtyard with the pond.
Although five of them later died during a recent cold snap, Nuthall rescued five other orphan ducklings and introduced them to the family without incident, keeping the numbers consistent.
“Ducks can’t smell,” she explained. “And they can’t count.”
Engle felt they deserved names, and so hung up posters in the courtyard windows announcing the arrival of Daffy, Howard, Rubber, Donald, Daisy, Glazed, Huey, Dewey, Louie, Ping, Ugli, Peking, Disco and Aflac.
All are now doing well, feeding from the insects in the courtyard and a supplement of cracked corn and bird seed.
The seagull would not comment on the record, but indicated that he isn’t happy about the new arrivals, though he’s dealing with it as best he can.
Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2188 or rjones@coxohio.com.
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