Second Chance part 2 "title by makkie, written by LadyKenai"
 

The next day we went to check on egg number seven. We couldn't wait to get there, we even had a race up the hill to the bridge to see who can get there first to see baby number seven! To our surprise the nest was empty. We thought oh no, this can't happen again! We sat on the park bench wondering what may have happened this time.

We looked across the water and saw fishermen with thier dogs and kids. We saw one parent meerkoet come up over the small dam over to our right. Then we heard him hollering like meerkoet's do. We wondered, "what is he doing?" Then makkie said, "what if they all fell down the dam and can't get back up?" Oh gosh! We rode our bikes through the trail over one small bridge, then the next. There they were! Only six babies though, what happened to number seven?

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We looked around and there were fishermen with thier families, they had a couple of dogs. They one at a time had been going to a house close by getting this and that. This time they brought another small dog and a cat back with them. The mom and dad meerkoet didn't appreciate this for sure. We were wondering, "don't these people see what is happening here?" The little babies were in distress for who knows how long that day. Since they live here, can't they hear these poor little babies screaching for help? Don't they pay attention to thier surroundings?

While the fishermen were still at the pond, one of the parents were trying to get the babies up the dam. It is just too tall, the parent could walk up the stick until he/she got towards the top of the dam and had to flap her wings to get all the way up the dam, there was just no way the babies could make it up. Over to the right a little waise was the end of the dam that runs into the ground with grass on it, even if the fishermen do leave, it is still too tall for the babies to get up. Do they have to spend the night there? How will mom and dad meerkoet get them up there? Then I thought well they should be building a new nest on this side of the dam before it gets dark out. But I am not a meerkoet so I didn't think things would go my way.

We thought about trying to catch the little ones and put them up over the dam, then thought that would surely stress them out even more. If we did touch them with our human hands, the parents might not want to care for them anymore so we decided to make them a small bridge out of materials around the the vicinity. We went across one small bridge and started gathering sticks. The only way to get the babies up there would be to put long sticks going from the water to the land at an angle these little fellas could manage to get up. We walked back over the small bridge closer to the babies, sat on the grass with our sticks and waited patiently for the fishermen to leave so we could try and help these six tiny ones.

Posted: 7 Nov 2008, by makkie