Watching baby ducks on the canal

Twice a week we walk about three miles, mostly along the canal bank. One of the benefits of walking the canals is watching the ducks that live on the canals all year around. Since this is Spring, the mother ducks are herding their little flocks of baby ducks. One mother duck had eight babies a week or so ago. This morning she only had five. I thought about whether or not the mother ducks grieve over the loss of their babies.

We assume that the babies are lost to either cats or dogs that run loose along the canals. There is no brush or cover along a Salt River Valley Canal, the canal companies keep the banks of the canals entirely free of any plant life at all. The banks are barren desert wastelands.

However, there are several places along the canals where the adjacent land owners have neglected their property and allowed the weeds and brush to grow in abundance. This is likely where the ducks can go to raise their families of baby birds.

One thing that is pretty strange about the Mesa canals is that the banks are covered with bleached out shells. There are species of small bivalve mollusks that live in the canals and when the canals are dredged, the shells pile up on the banks. Walking along the canal bank is a study in contrasts, with the barren canal bank, the irrigated yards and the silent canal.

A common fixture of the canals are abandoned shopping carts. It is amazing how may shopping carts find their way into the canals. Every year the canal companies dry up the canals for maintenance and in some spots there will be dozens of mud covered shopping carts rusting in the empty canal bottom.

There are only bridges across the canals where the major roads cross. Otherwise, the canals act as boundary lines between neighborhoods and divide up the city into sections. We get so used to driving around the canals we hardly notice the breaks in the roads. One morning, on our walk, we noticed a large number of police and emergency vehicles at one of the bridges near our home. One of the locals had driven his or her car into the canal. This happens regularly in the Valley and sometimes ends in tragedy for the person in the car.

When I was younger, the time the canals dried up was a golden opportunity to ride my bike along the canals and look for neat stuff that showed up when the water disappeared. In this age of videos and TV, I suppose the young people of today don't even notice the canals at all.