A few weeks back, we attended the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, for the 24th time! We’ve been going for so-o many years now, that some of the people we met in the early years are no longer with us. But we did get to renew old friendships and make a few new ones along the way.

With hundreds of thousands of people milling about, you’d think a little thing like a nature adventure would go unnoticed. Wrong!

Most of the festival activities take place in the infield of the racetrack at the fairgrounds and we are located in the Louisiana Folk Village area. Things that shouldn’t be run into are fenced off and we noticed fencing set up around a guide wire behind one of the tents. It was also cordoned off with police barricades to be sure it was left well-enough alone.

According to the sign, there was a nesting duck inside. Allen saw her in there but the nest area seemed to be nothing but a huge pile of leaves. To everyone’s surprise, Madame Canard paraded out to the middle of our compound, following anyone who had food in their hands, quacking up a storm. We fed her almost half a loaf of French bread pellets and eventually she had enough and disappeared.

Later, we found her back on the nest, setting away.

Theory: she got hungry, camouflaged the nest and left to go foraging.

When she had her fill, she returned to the nest. We remembered all the bread she’d eaten, so we asked staff to put a dish of water inside the barricade.

I’ve never seen so-o many people interested in the welfare of a small, feathered friend. There was a whole lot of heart out there, in the noise and dust.

Then I remembered: it was Mother’s Day. What a significant gesture.

Humans might take notice.

Georgie Manuel

May 22, 2011