Kids who come for the Chestermere Public Library’s Friday story time will have a chance to get up close with some ducklings June 8.
“Kids love animals, most of us love animals, but baby animals, it’s pretty hard to resist a baby animal,” said Chestermere Public Library Assistant Director Cathy Burness.
With four viewing times starting at 10:30 a.m. and every fifteen minutes after that, groups of 20 kids will have a chance to see and handle the ducklings while being taught some quick facts about ducks and ducklings.
“I believe they’re going to be only one or two days old so they’re pretty cute and pretty little,” she said.
Burness said that the ducklings are coming after the library had a wildly successful Friday Storytime earlier in the spring with chicks.
“We had 160 people that day,” said Burness.
With the unexpected popularity of the event they ended up having some families waiting up to an hour and a half to see the chicks.
“Some of these kids were 2 and 3 years old with a sibling in the stroller and the moms were trying to keep everybody happy,” said Burness, “but nobody was going home without seeing them.”
Adding to the weight times was the fact that everyone had to file into the Library washrooms to wash their hands before and after handling the chicks.
“They all did their due diligence to protect the birds and to protect themselves and they went in about 15-20 kids at a time,” said Burness.
She said that they learned a lot from the crowds that came in for the chicks and hope that they’ve applied those lessons to the upcoming duckling day.
“We don’t know how seamless it’s going to be yet but that’s the plan,” she said.
With the ducklings, families had to pre-register for the different time slots, something the library hopes will make things easier on parents of children excited to see the ducklings.
“That way if you have an 11:15 timeslot you don’t have to show up here at 10 O’clock hoping to get a spot,’ said Burness.
Registration went fast. As of the week of May 28, the first two time slots were full.
“The first 2 are absolutely full and the rest are about 2 thirds full,” said Burness.
While the ducklings will be the focus of the day, Burness said that there will still be a short story time starting at the regular 10:15 a.m.
It will however be shorter than usual since the first viewing of the ducklings is at 10:30 a.m.
“There are kids who may potentially want the story time so we’re still having the story time,” she said.
Both the chicks and ducklings have been brought in by what Burness described as a local hobby farm with an interest in sustainable and responsible farming.
“This customer e-mailed me to say she had some baby chicks and where we at all interested in any kind of a session with kids,” said Burness.
When it came to her attention that there would be ducklings, Burness jumped at the chance to bring them in, especially after the success of the chicks.
“Baby ducks, you don’t get a chance to get up close to baby ducks very often and we see ducks in our lake all the time and a lot of the wetlands around us,” said Burness.
“To have one right there in front of your eyes…they’re just so cute” she said.
