Need more fingers and toes

I seriously am unable to count our poultry anymore. And I'm way confused about it.

We lost a peep peep last week, so those are down to five. The poor guy was just missing. No feathers, nothing - until 3 days later when Christian found him floating in our duck pool. It was too late to go to the salon. Sorry little guy. So, five peeps. Add Dawn and the peep peeps' two dads and we have eight.

Next we count the turkeys. Still two. Yay.

The chickens are holding at six if we include the rooster. The three original girls are no longer laying eggs - or if they are, we have no idea where. We haven't seen an egg out of any of them in over a month. Eunice and Frenda however are egg-laying machines. They each lay one a day, and conveniently both put them in a goat feeder for me to find.

The ducks have become complicated. Karl and Harpo are still here - then we added the three new girls: Vera, Flo and Alice. (Who we collectively call Mel's Diner) Karl has matured and spends a WHOLE lot of time molesting Harpo. I mean a LOT. We decided there would probably be ducklings soon if she ever starts a nest. We have not seen any eggs yet.

About two weeks ago we decided to take Karl out to the pond. It seems kind of silly that all of our ducks swim in a baby pool when we have a perfectly nice stock tank. Christian caught him and marched him out there. He seemed to like it for a few minute but then flew back to the barn. Whatever. We did it once more a day later and hoped he would show Harpo where the tank was and how much nicer it was than the pool, but didn't hold our breath.

Well, now the older ducks have been leaving at dawn and returning at dusk for about a week. We never see where they go, but recently they flew in from the direction of the pond. We thought maybe Karl finally put it all together. And we thought there may be a nest. C was out moving the electric paddocks last night and thought he'd take a look for eggs. About half way through his search he saw three little ducks float out to the center of the pond. What the...??

I am stymied. They are old enough to swim. This means they are too old to have been born in the week that K & H have been leaving. And they are totally wild. Our big ducks were not around at the time, they were off in another part of the field. These guys seemed to know that they should get to the middle of the pond for safety as we approached. Now Ocam's Razor says these are Karl's kids. But honestly, I just can't see how. Harpo was never gone long enough to brood a nest until this week. And these guys are definitely a few weeks old. I haven't been close enough to see if they are Muscovies for sure, but they are brown - so maybe.

The only other possibility would be that wild ducks left their ducklings here. But... I just don't know. I'll try to get out and take some photos today to help figure it all out. But for the moment, I'm going to say our duck count may be seven. Totally weird.

..and stupid that we recently bought Mel's Diner.

Here are some pics from Karl's pond day. (Click to enlarge) Which also seems really stupid now if these ducklings are his and were already born and hiding in the grass somewhere. I just don't know what the heck to think.