R.I.P. White Duck

A quirky little thing about my mom is that she has owned farm animals for some time. First it started with geese, and a chicken at Easter. They were very cute and chirped a lot. She loved them as if they were her own. Sky made them feel at home with a "pond" made from a baby pool in her back yard. And everyone was happy. She even taught her dog and her two cats to love the birds and ignore the natural order of things.

Soon the baby chic and the baby goose started to get huge (and the goose got really mean) but my mom still loved them. After a while, the overly aggressive goose would attack strangers (and family) I found myself standing on tables and chairs to keep safe on many occasions. It soon became clear to her that she had a problem. So she took the goose to live at the UNM duck pond where it would be happy and could swim and peck to its heart's delight. She would go and visit the goose everyday. Well it turns out that they don't really like geese that chase the students away and are mean to the
other ducks, so that goose had to go away...

Then (just as on Friends) it turned out that the "little chick" was not a chick at all, she was a rooster and roosters aren't allowed in the city, because they wake up everyone VERY early. The rooster had to go away and live on a farm.
So, to fill the place in her heart, because she loved those foul, my mom got to baby ducks the following Easter. And she loved them as if they were her own.
Quite often I would get picture updates of what the White Duck and the Brown Duck were up to.
They didn't names beyond that because it was too hard to figure out if they were boy ducks or girl ducks. Anyhow, one of the ducks (the brown duck as it turned out) would lay eggs. My mom was very proud of these eggs, you would have thought she laid them. Once she cooked us a Christmas breakfast with duck omelets. I will be honest, this freaked me out a little.
All of this leads up to this afternoon, Jason and I drove to my mom's house to pick up Jaxon. We brought our dogs along for the ride.
Therein lies the problem.
Yes you guessed it, our dogs are German Short Haired pointers. These dogs are described as kind gentle animals with a natural hunting ability. Sydney my little girl dog is the killer amongst the two. She has killed before ( just birds) and we were aware of the danger. But we got distracted and it only took her seconds to get under the fence and find that sweet little duck.

The end result was that the White Duck didn't stand a chance and he lost his life today.
He probably sacrificed himself so the Brown Duck was unharmed.
It was a very sad scene, my mom was heart broken, as you can understand.
We wanted to take him to an after hours vet, but she said no. He was already too far gone.
"Its just the way things are" she said
I wanted to sing "Dust in the Wind" but I held back. I thought it might be too soon. She put the dead white duck in with the brown duck, so she would know what happened. Then she gave him a proper burial. Brave little soldier.