And, of course, she still had her friends.



On Wednesday 4th July, when Shelley was 9 weeks old and just about fully grown, we decided to give her another opportunity of living with other ducks and took her back to the rescue centre. She showed more promise than our previous attempt at giving her the chance of living with her siblings. We visited her three times over the next six days but on each visit it became increasingly obvious that she was becoming more withdrawn and was losing weight. She was always delighted to see us and followed Mary around faithfully. On our third visit, a member of the centre's staff told us that she 'was utterly miserable, that she would come out for a bit of food and then hide herself away again'.
That was enough. We'd tried. We hadn't gone through everything just so that Shelley could be miserable. So home she came.

This time, for good.