Sandy Priddy, who lives in Chattanooga’s Mountain Creek Trails neighborhood, has been watching for months now as two, snow-white Pekin ducks have guarded an injured mallard in her backyard.
Neighborhood children have named the birds. The brown-colored mallard is Mallory, and the two white ducks are Hewey and Dewey.
Priddy wonders if people with different skin tones could learn a lesson from these birds. They show up in her backyard every day and seem to have formed a little family of three, she says.
With racial tension over police actions and political polarization about COVID-19 dominating the news this summer, Priddy believes the close-knit birds – who live in a pond that was part of the former Quarry Golf Course off Mountain Creek Road – tell a timely story.
“In this day and time, with so much violence and hate, why do humans act like that?” Priddy muses, while watching the birds from her deck.