Wife leaves the house last night to go do something. Just myself and the kids at home.

About 30 minutes after Wife left, I hear a muffled crash.. as if some plastic had hit the floor. Huh? That’s strange. Quick cat check and I know where they all are so it wasn’t them.

I get up to investigate.

Check the backyard in case some of the plastic lawn chairs had been blown over. No, that wasn’t it. Come to think of it, it sounded like it came from the garage.

Uh oh. But if it was a person, why didn’t I hear any noise with the garage door? Hrm.

I go to check.

Slowly open the door expecting the unexpected….

And unexpected it was.

“Hi, Sneeze.”

Big sigh of relief, then big sigh of annoyance… at myself.

Who is Sneeze? You know all those muscovy ducks that hang out at our house? Sneeze (named by the kids) is one of them. He’s like Norm from the TV show “Cheers”. My guess is as soon as Wife pulled the car out of the garage he waddled right in and got trapped. The crash? Muscovy’s are perching ducks and from the bottles on the floor it seems he failed at perching on one of the shelves.

This is ultimately my fault. The ducks have developed a Pavlovian response to the sound of the garage door going up. Many times before we go somewhere the kids will raise the garage door then go put down some seed for the ducks. So garage door sound is now associated with getting fed. The duck could be 5-6 houses down but hears our garage and it’s a quick flight over for food. At the time the ducks would never come into the garage. I don’t know why, but they seemed unsure and afraid of it. Then one day they were all standing at the open door waiting for me, Sneeze saw me with food in hand and slowly he braved into the great urban cave. I rewarded him with food. And now, he’s no longer scared of the garage. It’s just another food plot to him.

*sigh*

I did this to myself. 🙂