We bought 20 ducklings today! Oscar had mentioned on Monday that he wanted to start raising ducks on the farm to eventually feed the kids duck eggs, but with their house not yet ready, los patitos are staying at our place. More or less on a whim, we bought the little fuzzy guys this morning on our way back to Almeria from Cusco. At the bird store, the duck vendor corralled all 20 into two cardboard boxes and they sat in our laps chirping noisily the whole way home. Getting them out of the boxes, and into their makeshift abodes was a bit more challenging.

Once we set up three rectangular milk-crates, it was a matter of pouring the patitos in and covering their house with another crate. Sounds simple. Only we were one roof short, and these guys are smaller than they seem.

We eventually had all 20 divvied up into the three houses, two with crate roofs, and one with a piece of cardboard, ready to settle in… or so we thought. We opened the door to their room a while later and found about half of them had escaped through the handle hole in the crate and we running around the room nervously squeaking at their brethren. I managed to chase them into a corner of the room and then one-by-one I snatched them up and dropped them back into their house, with Mads quickly replacing the top each time. After we patched the hole with a piece of cardboard they seemed less inclined to escape, and were even more distracted once we gave each patito house some food and water.

Pato/a — Duck (Apparently pata also means really good friend, but only in Peru.)
Patito/a — Duckling
Patitos