We’re all familiar with the term “imprinting,”right, when a baby animal forms an immediate and unbreakable bond with its main caregiver? Those caregivers are almost always their mothers. Almost always.
Visitors and staff at an English tourist attraction had seen a clutch of nine ducklings wandering the grounds of Mountfitchet Castle in recent weeks. But those “awwws”turned to alarm last week, when the ducklings suddenly appeared without their fearless leader.
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Jeremy Goldsmith, the attraction’s owner, knew they were too young to fend for themselves, so he gathered up the entire brood and took them home. But in an adorable case of mistaken identity, the ducklings imprinted on his dog, a 10 ½-year-old lab named Fred.
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Jeremy’s the one who’s looking after their day-to-day care until they’re ready to strike out on their own, but to them, Fred is the real parental figure in this equation. Mom or Dad always provides chauffeur services, right? Whenever Fred heads off to the moat for a swim, the kiddies just hitch a ride…
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These fluffy babies are so attached to their surrogate dad, they can spend an entire afternoon huddled around his legs as he sunbathes until suppertime…
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“Ducklings that age, they just want a mother and they now have Fred, a stay-at-home dad,”Jeremy joked.
But Fred has gained some daddy experience over the years, so he’s really an old hat at the whole parenting gig. The photo below was taken a couple years ago, when he played surrogate dad to another wayward duckling and even licked his dirty feathers clean.
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And last year, Jeremy says, the friendly pooch bonded with a squirrel that the family found and rescued from the side of a road. That’s a lab for ya, just friendly to the bone.
He is just such a lovely and loving natured dog. Fred has taken the ducklings under his paw, so to speak. They come into the house and they get in the dog basket.
They climb all over him, getting up on his head and his back. When he goes swimming, like Labradors like to, all the ducks follow him in and have fun too.
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But sometime in the next few weeks, these ducklings will come to a big fork in the road: Do we stay, or do we leave? Everyone has to forge their way into the world at some point, but these ducklings certainly have it made for now.
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