Mama duck makes her nursery in a grocery store's garden center
While perusing the grocery store garden section in late May and early June, shoppers expect to find pretty flowers, vegetable plants and hanging baskets.
That's why it was an unexpected, yet pleasant surprise for shoppers and employees at Plant Place at Kowalski's Markets in Woodbury, Minnesota, when a young boy discovered a mama mallard incubating her clutch of eggs among flats of bee balm flower plants in the parking lot garden center.
"I had not known we had a duck here so he brought me out and showed me," Plant Place employee Cathy Collins told WCCO about the 7-year-old boy who made her aware of the duck and her brood.
Employees at the store said they were surprised to find the duck had "chewed" all of the bee balm plants around her nest, and that she was nursing her eggs on a nest made of more than 60 plastic plant tags.
"She somehow got in here and laid her eggs in the bee balm around May 26," employee June Tate said.
Tate said there's a pond located behind the store and she thinks that's why the duck "sought comfort in bee balm."
"She's definitely made herself at home," Tate said.
"I don't know why with all the activity and customers all the time," Collins said of the duck setting up a nest in the garden center.
The employees said customers are enjoying seeing the duck while on their shopping trips, and they said they are working on coming up with a name for the mama duck, according to WCCO.