I got the dreaded call at work from the SB. "I have some bad news" Uh oh. We had lost one of the ducks. Apparently to drowning. I have heard that this can happen when the males are mating and push the head of the female into the water. Though the water in the creek isn't really that deep. Plus the SB said he had to pull the duck's bill out of the water, it had gotten stuck somehow.
He called again about half an hour later. There was a unknown factor. The duck had a hole in its bill where something had penetrated. That would be some force to get through a bill. Not simply a snag. The SB also saw some movement in the creek. Some bubbles. We had seen a relatively large water snake in the creek several weeks ago, but it wasn't the nasty sort. We also have turtles.
I was on my way home since the Governor gave us a couple extra hours off. When I got home the SB informed me that we had a pretty big snapping turtle in the creek. We went out and excavated it from the creek and moved it down to the river. The thing was indeed big. Not the largest I have ever seen, but given the size of the creek, it was impressive. And it was big enough to have held a duck's bill underwater for too long. I buried her in the duck graveyard.
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