Schools

(VIDEO) Alice Smith Students Make Way for Ducklings

A duck family makes its home in the school's courtyard each year.

Each spring, Alice Smith students welcome a feathered visitor into their school when a mother duck flies into the building’s central courtyard and makes it her home for the season. The cycle has become an annual tradition students and teachers depend on.

“I don’t know how many generations we’ve had,” said Kevin Spencer, an Alice Smith media specialist whose desk faces the courtyard.

This year, the school started seeing the mother duck in April, suffering from a hurt leg. Spencer suspects she arrived as early as March.

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“She was well hidden,” he said.

The duck nested in a courtyard, safely walled off from the rest of the world. She guarded her eggs and watched 11 ducklings hatch. Once students and staff could see the ducklings hopping around, they put out food and water for the family.

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The courtyard is a luscious place filled with tall grass and thick shrubs. But it does not have a pond to truly make a duck family feel at home. So when the mother duck decided it was time, she started tapping on the classroom windows surrounding the courtyard to let the school know she and her flightless ducklings were ready to move on.

In the past, school staff opened the courtyard doors and walled off the hallways to let the duck family waddle outside on their own.

But with the mother’s leg still hurt, they set out a large dog carrier instead and waited for the duck family to pile inside.

On Friday, staff carried the mother and her ducklings to the Shady Oak Road pond near Highway 7 and watched them slip into the water.

One more cycle of spring had passed.

 

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