MockingQuantum posted:

ducks are pretty great pets but be warned that some of them can get pretty aggressive/defensive, which can sometimes be a good thing

my mother-in-law is a veterinarian and her clinic used to be the animal control drop-off site for a big chunk of my city, so she'd mostly get dogs and cats, but will occasionally get weirder animals. Chickens in particular weren't super uncommon, and she wanted chickens at her house, so one year she got three chickens over the course of the summer. well near the end of the summer another chicken showed up... with a duck. the animal control officer said as he was trying to catch the chicken, the duck just emerged from a nearby bush and started yelling at him. So he took one of the animal crates he keeps in the truck, put it on the ground, put some food in it, and opened the door. In trotted the duck, with the chicken following her.

So my mother in law figured, hey, well, I guess they're friends, and took both home. The duck's name is phoebe and she is very much the guard-duck for the chickens, she won't let anybody but my m-i-l near them. She's pretty sure phoebe has scared off at least a couple of foxes, too.

for the record, the chickens are all named rachel. the first one was named rachel, the second one was named monica, but they're super hard to tell apart because they're both buff colored so eventually my m-i-l claimed defeat and just called both of them rachel. when she got the other two they were given the name of rachel as well, as is tradition