The irony of it all

It's been raining here today.  Torrential, stay indoors raining.  Sydney at one point asked if she could go swimming in it.  That kind of rain.  Needless to say we'd been indoors ALL DAY.  And all of us were a bit stir crazy (read: on each others' nerves). 

Joel got home from work, and the rain had let up a bit, so he offered to take the wound up kiddos on a walk with the dog.  I thought it'd be a better idea for all of us to go.  A little fresh air never hurt anyone, right?

We were about to head out on our walk, all six of us plus the dog, when the rain started up again.  And hard.  I thought it could be fun, even in the rain, so we ventured out with our rainhoods in the downpour.  We had just crossed the street from our house, when we noticed the trio of friendly ducks from the day before, splashing in the gutter across the way.  We paused to point them out to the little girls who are completely enamored of them.  Just at that moment, a teenage driver came speeding down the road, and the ducks had to take flight to avoid being hit.  Unfortunately, one of our little ducky friends didn't make it very far.  He mistakenly flew right into the side of that car, and with a VERY loud clunk, fell on his back with a visibly broken neck.

We stood there in shock.  I didn't even think to avert the kids eyes.  The driver drove about 200 feet before realizing that he had just traumatized 4 small children, and reversed the car to see if there was anything he could do.  In that time, Joel had snapped out of his shock, and ran over to see if there was anything that could be done to help the duck.  He immdediately realized there wasn't, and that the only thing to do was put it out of its misery.  So, without thinking, he stooped down and picked the poor thing up by its head, right in front of the kids and the bewildered driver.  The driver asked what he was doing, and Joel told him "The only thing to do is put it out of it's misery.  If your squeamish, you might want to leave."...which the driver then did quickly.

***Okay, so at this point I finally snapped out of it...and realized WHAT he was about to do.  It's what all duck hunters do.  (I won't go into details...shudder...Oh, and if any of our neighbors are reading this, I'm SO SORRY if you saw that.)

"OH! MY....my...uh...kids...lets keep walking.  Daddy's going to..uh...help...the duck.  Let's keep walking. Just keep walking.  WALK!!"

We made a speedy retreat up the street and I started pointing out all of the puddles that the kids could jump in.  Thank goodness they have short attention spans, because by the end of our walk, they were so excited that mom was letting them practically "go swimming" in the rain, that they had all but forgotten the demise of the poor, poor, duck. 

Who knew huge rain puddles could be so diverting?

The whole sad story is riddled with irony.
     1.  Joel had yet to 'do-in' a duck, until today.
     2.  The dog Joel has been training to be a 'duck-dog' was completely oblivious of the entire situation.
     3.  It's not considered animal cruelty if you were trying to help the poor thing, is it?
     4.  Paige kept saying 'bye-bye duckie' the rest of the night.  We wonder if she knows.
     5.  As I was writing this, I realized it was the duck I had taken pictures of only a few days before...

I feel I owe it to him.  Farewell Mr. Duck.  Thank you for making us smile, until you got hit by a car...right in front of us....

Er, um...rest in peace?