Considering we live in a major metropolitan area, it should be
surprising that we had two run-ins with the local wildlife. But it's
not. We live near to two different marshes (read mosquito-breeding
grounds) and as a result, it's not a completely strange thing to have a
duck waddling through the yard.
It is, however, strange to have newly-hatched baby ducks up on the roof
of the garage.
To explain: the house backs onto an alleyway, so there's no backyard to
speak of, but as the roof of the garage is flat and has a doorway
leading directly to it, in the past, we used that as our deck. We don't
anymore because the Great White Hunter landlord refuses to authorize
Tweedledumb the funds to fix it. It's sagging and it needs to be
repaired, but because GWH would rather go on safari than provide his
tenants with a garage roof that's not about to cave-in, it hasn't been
fixed. The husband refuses to let anyone out there. He says it's not
safe to walk on. So, for the past, oh, what is it now, two years, our
deck has been off-limits. It's also filthy: we haven't cleaned off the
leaves and other detritus, including a whole heck of a lot of roofing
materials the cheapo roofers conveniently left behind, and neither has
Tweedledumb. But it's not filthy to the ducks, though. Apparently, the
leaves provide a pretty good spot to lay some eggs. Saturday morning,
I'm frying bacon for breakfast and trying not to burn myself with the
occasional splatters of grease, and I heard the oddest sound. Some sort
of chirping. Even in my early-morning addled state, I know this doesn't
compute. I know the bacon isn't giving off enough grease that it would
suddenly be chirping. Bacon hisses. It sizzles. It doesn't chirp.
Walking away from the stove, I go to the window on the opposite end of
the kitchen, and before I get there my sister says, "What's that
sound?" I reply that I don't know, but as soon as I look out the window
at our blighted side-yard (another thing that's wrong with this place:
GWH is too cheap to pay for sod---or even grass seed, so the side yard
resembles the exercise yard at Shawshank Prison)I see what the problem
is. There's a mama duck, squawking at her hatchlings from the yard. The
hatchlings, however, are on the roof of the garage, one floor up from
mom, trying to figure out how to get down to her. 
Duckies
I run for the camera. My sister calls for the kids. The bacon keeps
frying in the background. Everyone is enthralled with the cute little
duckies until we realize that there's no way Mom is planning on flying
to the roof and the babies can't get down to her just yet. We worry. My
nephew has the bright idea of taking them downstairs and is about ready
to leap to the rescue when his mother stops him with a warning: if we
touch them, the mom might not want to have anything to do with them.
The mother is clearly getting annoyed. We empathize with the ducklings:
they're getting chewed out for their mother's stupidity for flying onto
a roof to lay her eggs. We wonder what we should do.
The husband then intervenes. He goes out onto the roof, fights to scoop
them into a small box, and just manages. By this time, mama duck has
about had it and is working her way round to the front of the house and
over to the marsh. The husband runs to catch up with her and opens the
box onto the lawn where the ducky family is reunited. He'd been very
careful about how much he touched them and apparently all was fine. Mom
didn't reject her human hand-tainted babies and they made their way
over to the marsh without incident. Only problem is that one egg didn't
hatch. It's still up on the garage and we keep forgetting to take care
of it. I hope it hasn't started rotting yet. Yuck.