Animal Care

One of the big selling points when we bought our house was the cute little pond out back that is full of turtles, fish, ducks, and birds. We just sort of assumed that ponds naturally attract wildlife, and for the last 3 years, we've been enjoying nature without much thought about the whole thing. The illusion was broken when our next door neighbors (see World's Best Neighbors) went on vacation for three weeks and asked us to take care of their house. Apparently, the World's Best Neighbors are also the World's Best Animal Lovers. We had some vague notion that they fed the wildlife of the pond, but we had NO IDEA of the extent of it. Jackson has had a blast with the job.

On the way down to the duck feeding area

(they have their own little concrete pad to eat off of)

The pampered ducks get two scoops of corn plus a scoop of turtle food
(who knew turtles had their own food?)

This picture doesn't really capture the frenzy of a feeding session - the ducks peck at each other and step on each other while trying to get the food

Back to the house to reload

Time for turtle food

Getting the turtle food into the pond itself takes a

little bit of effort when you are 2
But whatever spills on the grass is gone by the next day

We no longer have to wonder why the turtles in our pond are freakishly large
On the way to feed the fish

Aww...our happy little zoo keeper

Not pictured: refilling of no less than 4 bird feeders every three days. Apparently our backyard is teeming with wildlife for a reason....