A Mother Duck kind of day

MOMMA DUCK WINS A NOMINATION FOR THE (ANTI) MOTHER OF THE YEAR AWARD

It was a busy two-lane road in a high-traffic shopping area. My sister-in-law spotted a Momma Duck and her 6 or 7 little ducklings trying to cross this heavily traveled road. Jenn turned her minivan into the parking lot as we tried to figure out what to do about the ducks. They were sure to be duck pancakes. They didn't have a chance against that traffic.
I jumped out and tried to get the momma duck to back up and turn around the other way.

It worked..kind of. She was NOT happy with me...she looked mad, actually. But, she turned in the other direction. For a minute. She was really taking a detour around me back towards the road. She was rather insistent about waddling towards the rushing cars.

We thought about putting her in a box and taking her to the pond outside my mother-in-law's condo. How do you get a mad, momma duck in a box WITH the ducklings? We had to do something...so I walked into a bar right there and asked for a box.

(This is starting to sound like multiple bad jokes: Why did the momma duck cross the road?...This crazy woman walked into a bar....)

The bartender came out, a customer had a box in their trunk, and we debated about the success of this mission. The Momma duck, meanwhile, continued trying to turn back to cross the road, which, by the way, had nothing on the other side except a mall, massive parking lots, and a gas station. No woods, ponds, or anything remotely like a duck habitat anywhere in sight.

While debating, the Momma duck moved her ducklings into a ditch and we lost sight of them.
I don't know what happened to them...but they were still headed toward the road when we gave up and drove home.

My point of sharing this story is that if a Momma duck can attempt to cross Mentor Avenue with her baby ducklings...oh and I forgot to mention that she STEPPED ON ONE OF HER DUCKLINGS...
If Momma duck can have this kind of day, then perhaps we shouldn't feel so badly about our own mistakes. It might just be natural to make mistakes. Maybe we could just take the pressure off of ourselves and count it as "a Mother Duck kind of day."