School life / School duck parades, 2016–2021
Three Schools Where the Ducks Walk Out Through the Building
Mother ducks keep nesting in elementary-school courtyards with no exit except the hallway. The schools have learned to hold the door.
Village Elementary in Hartland, Michigan, has a courtyard in the middle of the building, and for years a mother duck nested in it. The school called her Vanessa, because the letter V is also in Village. The first time her ducklings hatched, staff were awestruck. A teacher worked out that the ducklings needed water soon, and the only way to water was through the school. So the staff cleared a path down the hallway, taping black construction paper along the walls to make the ducks comfortable, and the family walked out across the playground to a wetland.
In April 2016 the principal, William Cain, told ABC News that the first time had taken a while, because the duck was leery. This time, he said, he didn't think it took more than two or three minutes. "It's just like she knows how now."
Leaving the house takes a duck two or three minutes. It takes a family of five, including the dog, about forty, and nobody here knows how now.
At Glover Elementary in Milton, Massachusetts, students, parents and staff tracked their courtyard nest through a duckcam connected to an app. In 2018 the principal, Karen McDavitt, told The 74 that the school had found out the previous year's eggs had hatched from one of the kids watching at home.
So the building learned the news from a child on a couch.
At Eisenhower Elementary in Hopkins, Minnesota, the district says a family of ducks has been coming back to the courtyard for decades. When the eggs hatch, someone opens the door and leads the ducklings down a hallway and out the back toward a pond. Two parents, Brad and Laurie Gilmore, wrote and illustrated a children's book about it, Ducks in a Row...Here We Go, with proceeds going to the courtyard and the PTO. "Students are like ducklings," Brad Gilmore told the district.
I read that one to my wife and stopped. The eldest is a junior. She has a learner's permit and a list of colleges taped inside her closet door. The hallway is clear. Somebody is holding the door. Two or three minutes, in duck terms, is about a year and a half.
The youngest asked what happens to the ducks after the pond. I said they grow up and fly somewhere. She asked whether they come back. I said some of them do, to the same courtyard, every spring. She said good, and went back to her cereal, which is the reaction I am trying to learn.
Sources
The public records, school pages and published accounts this story draws on. Where the story imagines a scene or a line of dialogue, that is the column’s telling, not a quotation.
- ABC News: Mother Duck Leads Baby Ducklings on Waddle Through Michigan School abcnews.com
- The74: Mama Ducks and Their Ducklings Get the Red-Carpet Treatment the74million.org
- Hopkins Public Schools: Eisenhower’s courtyard ducklings inspire children’s book hopkinsschools.org