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Quackette approaches her nest of eggs concealed in an azalea bush at the Fortney home in Spotsylvania County. The family is hosting the mother and her ready-to-hatch eggs in their front yard.
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A front-yard flower bush might not sound like the kind of place a mama duck would want to make a nest and raise her nine chicks, but try telling that to the duck.
Two weeks ago a wild duck and her mate decided to move in with a family with two teenagers, two barking dogs and a street full of loud children.
Valerie Fortney, an investigative analyst with the U.S. inspector general, discovered the duck and her mate, currently known as Quack and Quackette, but couldn't get the rest of her family to believe her.
"For two weeks they kept telling me, 'You're nuts,'" she said, standing outside her home in Piedmont Hills.
She spread apart her flower bush, and sure enough, inside was a duck sitting on its nest, which was roughly the size of a large pie.
Fortney finally convinced her husband she was not nuts when he was in the yard weeding and the duck popped out of the azalea bush to greet him.
"He was just standing there with a big grin on his face," Fortney said of her husband, David, who owns Fortney Lawn and Garden.
The mama duck doesn't seem to mind the Fortneys, and they've become attached to her as well.
When the mama duck left the nest one day, the Fortneys crawled into the bush and counted nine eggs in the nest.
Now they're worried because they learned, after doing some research on the Internet, that the chicks will be born in two weeks and two weeks after that will need to be walked by the mama duck into a pond.
Here's the problem: There's no pond in chick-walking distance.
So the Fortneys came up with a plan. They're going to buy a kiddie wading pool, and create some sort of a ramp so the little chicks can climb in.
Valerie Fortney, who telecommutes most days, also learned there are two ponds not too far from her home--one near Chancellor High School and one in the subdivision across the street, Piedmont Landing.
She did a little more investigating and learned ducks can walk up to a mile to get to a pond. But just in case, the Fortneys will create a small pond a little closer.
The Fortneys don't know how long the duck family will share their home. But Valerie Fortney has come to enjoy looking out her home-office window at her mama duck.
"I am thrilled about the opportunity to witness this from my front window," she said.
Some of the neighborhood children have become attached to the duck family, as well, and come by to visit.
But the Fortneys know wild ducks are wild, and at some point the duck family will probably leave.
Valerie Fortney is used to that, though, because this is not the first time she has helped and cared for a feathered creature.
Some time ago she nursed and cared for a robin until he was able to fly off on his own.
She looks up at the sky and says, "I don't know what it is about my home."
