The warm fuzzy feeling in the loss was that the ducks were always inseparable and knowing that the male was taken and the female left leaves you proud that the male took on whatever was facing it and died in the battle and the momma proudly lives on. We sell the duck eggs (not sure why but she always lays them in about 8-10" of water rather than in the nice straw nest we made for her) . I have read that a weasel will wring the neck of chickens and take a blood meal but not sure how that really works or if that is what happened here or not.
The trail cam behind the house does show a fox moving through at times and a lone coyote. Our dog is pretty good at scaring anything away but since he snoozes in the garage which is far away, and his arthritis makes it so it is hard for him to get up and get moving he probably was oblivious to the struggle.
I will watch the pickerel bulbs for a while yet. The plants were mailed to me late summer/early fall and looked kind of bedraggled and droopy. After planting they didn't really perk up much or have new growth, time will tell.
