The Story of 2 Ducks

Over the last month Jimmy has been working on setting up a tilapia pond at Domingo's house. It will be one of the projects for the seminary students to learn in order for them to support themselves as church planters. This is a trial run. I will post about the fish later. Today it's about ducks!

{Silas playing with Candi}

We love Domingo's family! Candelaria and Domingo have such a great relationship with their kids. I enjoy seeing them all together and in their home setting. 

Candelaria fixed us some delicious chicken caldo. After the meal we all just sat and talked. Zoila speaks Spanish and Kekchi, so she helps Candelaria and me communicate.

 

Candi is just a couple months older than Eden. I hope they will be the best of friends. Her middle name is Xela, after my name. Domingo jokingly referred to her as the "fat Xela"... I laughed! It is a compliment here to the mother if your baby is fat. She is pretty big for her age. I think she is beautiful and I am jealous of her thick head of hair... my babies are so bald! I know Eden's little bit of hair is going to fall out any day.

{Domingo & Jimmy with each other's new daughter}

Samuel is so sweet to our boys. He always runs around with them and they adore him, especially Jonah. 

Their family raises turkeys and ducks to sell. My boys enjoyed chasing around the baby ducks. Candelaria thought it was cute and wanted to send a duck home for the boys as a pet. 

I had never thought about a duck as a pet before. A goose yes, because they eat snakes. Now that's a skill I appreciate. A duck?... It sounded cute, plus I had the picture of a little duckling in my head.  

She handed us a box that was tied shut when we left. I was concerned about our dogs eating the boys' new little pet, so we stopped by our forever house on the way home thinking he could live there until we figured this out.  

Jimmy untied the box and what pops out... a big full-grown duck. Still cute. Then we realized there was something else in the box... another duck!

I was glad he had a friend, but that meant soon we would have even more ducks. Candelaria never mentioned the other duck when we were talking about this. 

Jimmy went to talk to our vet the next day. Jimmy asked, "What do you have for ducks?" He said, "There are pressure cookers around the corner. You have to cook those things for a long time for them to taste good." Who has a duck as a pet? Still, Jimmy ended up coming home with duck paraphernalia. We have to be the only crazies in all of Petén who would ever buy something for their duck. Silly gringo ducks. They had a tub to swim in and then a separate bowl to drink out of... ridiculous! 

Well you can guess what happened. Less then a week later our dogs actually ate a duck. There were feathers and pieces all over our yard. Thankfully it wasn't the boys' ducks since they were safe at the forever house, but still our dogs have a taste for ducks. Also, these ducks decided to make Jimmy's wood shop their hang out spot. There was duck poo EVERYWHERE in just a matter of a couple days. We are going to have to pressure wash that space. We quickly admitted this wasn't going to work. 

The boys did like their ducks. They would chase them around and feed them. They're 2-yr-olds though, so all it took was Daddy saying he didn't like ducks and the boys agreed with him. 

So we had to find someone who wouldn't eat these ducks. You cannot eat a duck once it is given a name... it's just wrong. (Their names were Nemo and Baloo by the way.) Lico wanted to raise ducks and after promising that Nemo and Baloo would die of old age, we gave them to him. So, no more ducks for us... or our dogs! The boys have only asked about them once since then. We told them that they live with Lico now. They were ok with that.