{"id":41,"date":"2019-09-21T03:12:54","date_gmt":"2019-09-21T03:12:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grapevinecreekducks.com\/?page_id=41"},"modified":"2019-10-04T22:29:12","modified_gmt":"2019-10-04T22:29:12","slug":"our-story","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/grapevinecreekducks.com\/index.php\/our-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Story Behind the Stories<\/h3>\t\t\t

The stories in The Grapevine Creek Ducks<\/em> series are true — based on our real experiences with twenty real ducks that we have had as pets.\u00a0 We have taken a few liberties to make the stories accessible to younger readers.\u00a0 We’ve changed Abby’s age to about eight to appeal to the age group the books are designed for.\u00a0 In fact, she was sixteen when we got the ducks featured in our first story — and therein lies a completely different story!\u00a0 It’s a story that involves a happy accident, a terrible chronic illness, and a lot of duck poo.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div><\/div><\/div>

The Happy Accident<\/h3>\t\t\t
\"Bob<\/a>

Bob and Phil, our first ducks.<\/p><\/div>\n

When we were house-hunting, we found a delightful house in the woods outside of Winston-Salem.\u00a0 It had a creek running through the back yard, and behind it was a farm with a large pond fed by the creek.\u00a0 But even more appealing, there were ducks!\u00a0 They had been hatched by the previous owner as a preschool project, and then released to live on the pond.\u00a0 They came up to the house every day to get a snack.\u00a0 Abby named them “Bob” and “Phil,” and the kids decided that this was the house we would buy.\u00a0 Good thing the adults liked other things about the house, too!<\/p>\n

Of course, we soon discovered that the ducks were a couple, and so we changed “Phil” to “Philomena.”\u00a0 We kept a bag of cracked corn in the garage, and every day Bob and Philomena would waddle up to the back door, quacking for their daily treat.\u00a0 For about two years, they were a daily routine — until one day Philomena was killed by a fox.\u00a0 That was our first experience of duck grief — Bob spent weeks going up to different houses, quacking to find his missing mate.\u00a0 Then one day, about a year later, he showed up with a little wood duck girlfriend.\u00a0 He tried again and again to get her to come to the house to get corn – but she was wild and never learned to trust us.\u00a0 We had to leave the corn and go inside, and then she would come up and eat with him.\u00a0 And of course, eventually, another fox caught up with Bob.\u00a0 No more daily visits from the ducks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div><\/div><\/div>

Chronic Illness<\/h3>\t\t\t
\"Abby<\/a>

Abby and the four original ducklings.<\/p><\/div>\n

Abby was in doing well in high school.\u00a0 She was in tenth grade, playing in the orchestra, and had completed the classroom training for driver’s ed.\u00a0 Then, a few days before Halloween, she came down with what we thought was a terrible case of the flu.\u00a0 But she didn’t get better — after many rounds of testing and referrals, the doctors announced that she had Myalgic Encephalomyelitis or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME\/CFS).\u00a0 She could barely function; previously a bookworm, she couldn’t comprehend a simple paragraph.\u00a0 She had to drop out of school.\u00a0 There currently is no real treatment for ME\/CFS. We were devastated.<\/p>\n

Many referrals later and through treatment of symptoms, Abby gradually improved until she could bear a small amount of activity on a good day.\u00a0 But she was terribly bored. One day she brought up the subject of ducks: after Bob and Phil, she had always wanted to have some more ducks.\u00a0 Now she had the idea that a couple of pet ducks would help her with an activity that would get her out of the house and give her a something to focus on.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The ducks became a family project.\u00a0 We did tons of research, built a pen and coop that would keep the ducks safe from predators at night, and then one day went to the farm store.\u00a0 We came home with four amazingly cute ducklings, and the story began!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div><\/div><\/div>

\t\t\t

There is still no cure or real treatment for ME\/CFS.\u00a0 There is exciting research going on that is very promising, but a definitive diagnostic test and treatment are still years away.\u00a0 Abby has been able to reach a plateau where she is able to function a little better; but it is a daily struggle with devastating symptoms.\u00a0 If you would like to learn more about ME\/CFS, we recommend visiting the Solve CFS website at https:\/\/solvecfs.org\/<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The stories in The Grapevine Creek Ducks series are true — based on our real experiences with twenty real ducks that we have had as pets.\u00a0 We have taken a few liberties to make the stories accessible to younger readers.\u00a0 We’ve changed Abby’s age to about eight to appeal to the age group the booksContinue reading →<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-41","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","no-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grapevinecreekducks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/41","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grapevinecreekducks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grapevinecreekducks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grapevinecreekducks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grapevinecreekducks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/grapevinecreekducks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/41\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68,"href":"https:\/\/grapevinecreekducks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/41\/revisions\/68"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grapevinecreekducks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}