Duck Down

Last evening I went as usual to close the duck pen. There were only four ducks instead of five – the three black runners, Scarlet, Rhett and Ashley, and the mallard hen, Black Beauty. Jazzie was missing, my favorite. She was a dove brown mallard. The ducks always go everywhere together. My heart sank and I launched a search around the farm yard. No Jazzie. I closed up the chickens and went out to the ditches along Palomino Lane which are full of water since spring flooding is upon us. I looked up and down the road. Saw nothing. We had just had a two hour howling snow storm. I saw no coyotes tracks or otherwise. John came out and I told him. He wanted to take a walk to the west on Palomino Lane. He got not 100 feet and called out to me. There lay what was left of Jazzie. Most of her had been eaten. Her shoulders,neck, head and feet were all that was left. Someone had made supper of her. I was so sad. We put her remains to the side of the road and covered her with dead sage brush. Today I was out in the farm yard, and the ducks had an eye to the sky. I looked up and saw an eagle soaring; then there were two. I thought that is what had happened to Jazzie since coyotes usually cart their meal off to eat elsewhere, not let them lay in the middle of the road. When I looked out the window later, a red headed big black bird sat on the mound that was Jazzie. Turkey vultures finished her off.