In the light of cold Darwinian reality those ducks deserved to die. What duck in his right mind would decide to raise a family in a mud puddle beside the freeway?
But there they were. Mother duck sitting serenely on eggs in a patch of long grass missed by the mower a couple of weeks earlier. Father duck patrolling the mud puddle.
The mud puddle would have dried up days ago if it weren't for a boy named Joseph. Joseph and his mother brought five gallons between them every day to top up the mud puddle.
It wasn't enough though.
Joseph's mom bought five hundred feet of the cheapest garden hose she could find and they plugged it in to Joseph's teacher's ex boy friend's house near the freeway and once each day Joseph unfurled the hose and lead it through two back yards and over one road to the mud puddle and they kept the puddle brimming.
Joseph loved to watch the ducks. He couldn't hear their friendly quacking over the roar of triple trailers and Hondas flying by three lanes deep, but he could see their sweet faces.
Eleven baby ducks appeared, and right away their numbers began to shrink.
``Rats!'' his mother said, but Joseph stayed one long Saturday to watch and he saw the falcon.
``Peregrine falcon?'' his mom said, ``Couldn't be. There's only one pair in the city, and they're over on the Carnegie Building.''
But the boy insisted. ``Nesting under the overpass,'' he said.
His mother spent her precious Sunday off watching the ducks with Joseph and sure enough a Peregrine falcon soared down and soared up with a duckling in its talons. She called the Audubon and they were very excited and concerned. So near the freeway. So many toxins.
``What about the ducks?'' Joseph asked.
``They don't care about the ducks,'' his mother said. ``The ducks are a wild-domestic mix. They don't care about the ducks.''
``But I want to save the baby ducks,'' he said.
``Then the Peregrines might not be able to feed their babies and Peregrines are very rare.''
``I want to save the baby ducks,'' the boy said. And he did.
He netted them one night. Got the parents too, though the father bit him so hard he had to have a tetanus booster. He freed them on a pond in a nearby park already much befouled by duck excrement.
When Joseph's mom went back to check on the Peregrines and the ducks she found the mud puddle dry and the nest on the overpass deserted.