Ducks

Ducks on a field trip with their protectors.

We had ducks, too, and although I know most of you won’t believe me, especially after some of my earlier reminisces on animals, I’m just going to put it out there: I liked the ducks.

We started out with more than a dozen ducklings and goslings, bought from Orscheln’s instead of Atwoods, in the spring, because some brilliant salesperson at Orscheln's actually separated out the bunches and stuck them under signs labeled “Runner Ducks,” and “Goslings,” rather than just dumping the whole kit and caboodle into a corrugated tin watering trough labeled carelessly, “Assorted Ducks.”

Apparently, they were organized according to size, or maybe beak shape, sometimes maybe color, because the end result was, we still ended up with random assorted ducks, none of them actual Runner Ducks (like the Aflac duck), which was what Jim had wanted, or any specific breed we could identify.  This isn’t saying much, as the only ducks I recognize are Mallards, and after that, all I can tell you is if it’s brown, it’s probably the female. 

Woody and friends

They spent their early weeks in the enclosed barn, sheltered from the chilly Kansas wind and predators, gobbling up wild fowl feed, which looks an awful lot like dog food, and pooping in their water pans.  It was around then I began to feel something akin to affection for them because, I discovered, while they were as dumb as chickens, they were not as mean; they didn’t single out the sickly one and then literally peck it to death.  They passed their time slipping and sliding over and around each other, beeping and honking frantically, in a seemingly never-ending mad scramble to be the closest one to the heat lamp. 

After a few weeks, Jim and the kids plopped them into handled paper grocery bags for the trek across the front yard and introduced them to the stream that runs from the windmill to the pond.  The ducks took to swimming like … well, you know, and the geese sank like rocks.  Getting them back to the barn was tricky since, if you pack enough wet waterfowl into a paper grocery bag, and then they clamber all over each other, each trying to get to the top for a peek out, eventually the paper bag will disintegrate, usually right in front of a dog, or hawk.  The kids would shriek and race around, trying to gather the wildly flapping babies who might have thought a hawk or dog would be less terrifying.  Every day after that the boys and often the neighbor kids up front would cart the whole crew to the stream and back.

Betsy too.

On the night Jim decided the ducks were big enough to stay out at the pond on their own, a storm blew through.  And so their numbers began to diminish.

Two ducks survived to adulthood, a male and female, so scientifically designated -- as noted earlier -- because one was brown and one wasn’t.  Popcorn was a white duck with a ridiculous poof of feathers on the top of his head.  We never could take him seriously.  Because of his coloring, it’s a miracle he lasted as long as he did.  He was attacked and wounded twice, once by Amanda’s (my sister) great dane, Harli, who seemed startled that she could catch anything, and promptly dropped Popcorn with a little encouragement from Amanda, who was whacking Harli on the head and hollering at her.  The second time, a snapping turtle got ahold of Popcorn, tearing up one webbed foot and giving him a permanent limp.  We applied Neosporin liberally and attempted, in spite of limited success, to keep a bandaid on his foot.  He hated the feeling and stepped gingerly across the porch until he could shake the bandage off.  In spite of this, Popcorn always had a cheerful disposition and looked for all the world like he was grinning.  He and the other duck would waddle up to the house each morning from the windmill pond, and as summer passed, the wild wheat grew taller, it got harder to see the ducks, except for the parting of the grasses as they shuffled, single file, up to the porch for breakfast.  They hung out around the house all day, keeping a wary eye on the dogs (who were on the inside), and sometimes following the chickens, although the chickens clearly had better things to do than fraternize with ducks.

In the evenings, the two would yawn and stretch, glancing expectantly toward the house, announcing their pending departure with impatient pacing back and forth in front of the living room windows until one of us would open the door and then walk with them back to the pond.  If nobody was in the house, as was sometimes the case, they would make a beeline for the train depot, where Amanda lives.  Since they couldn’t navigate the stairs, they would back themselves up so they could see through the windows if they stretched their necks, then shifted expectantly from foot to foot, craning to get a view inside, and quacking to get her attention. 

They knew, instinctively, that this was the most dangerous time of day, when hawks, owls, and coyotes would be on the prowl. I don’t know how they instinctively knew they needed protection, but couldn’t figure out by the same means that they were ducks, and had all the gifts and responsibilities thereof, such as, say, flying.  But they didn’t.  And so, each night, we accompanied them, as they pitter-pattered cheerfully behind us back to the pond.  It was a good routine.

Once Jim had made a cake and frosted it with no fewer than three cans of frosting and an entire canister of sprinkles.  Nobody could finish it, so I finally tossed it out into the yard for the chickens.  Call me silly, but I like to think of the chickens that supply us with eggs as feasting on cake rather than just bugs.  Anyway, later that afternoon, Jim looked up when he heard Popcorn’s approach, and around the corner Popcorn teetered drunkenly, his yellow beak caked with an inch of frosting and sprinkles, the only sign of his recent overindulgence.

Lincoln, Grace, Jack (feeding Popcorn and Duck Duck), and Hannah

In the end, a coyote got Popcorn.  When the other duck showed up alone one morning, we walked out to the pond, dreading what we suspected we’d find: a fluff of white feathers in a circular pattern, the sure sign of a coyote.  An owl would have left no trace. The feathers were there. And we were down to one duck. 

The other duck’s official name was “Next,” because when the ducks began to disappear, Jim looked at her and said philosophically, “You know, you’re next.”  This was too grim for the rest of us and so we just called her “Duck Duck”.  For a time after Popcorn’s death, Duck Duck would waddle back to the pond, always with her escort, but after awhile, with the approach of autumn and the withering of the foliage where she took shelter near the pond, and perhaps because we didn’t like to think of her out there alone, we convinced her to stay on the porch at night.  She would hunker down under one of the patio chairs, on a bed of hay, and tuck her head under her wing. In the morning, she’d peer into the window to see who was awake, and who would come visit her first, sometimes tapping on the window with her beak.

Late in the winter, on a particularly cold, still night, Jim woke up, certain he’d heard something.  He flicked on the front porch light, but saw nothing.  On opening the front door, he saw the duck scrambling back up onto the porch and she waddled between his legs into the house.  He scooped her up and deposited her back on her bed, then went back to his own.  It happened a second time, and this time when he flicked on the porch light, it was to see a huge owl, wings extended to a full four feet, trying to corner the duck on the porch.  The owl jumped back a few feet, but stayed menacingly where it landed, clearly determined to have duck dinner as soon as Jim shut the door again.  So Jim glared at the owl and plucked the cowering duck out from under the chair.  Duck Duck slept in the dog kennel that night.  And that’s where she slept from then until it was warm, and safe enough, to return to the porch in the spring. 

Sometimes she pretended to dodge and evade us, but we always caught her, and carried her as she muttered (ducks mutter), tucked under an arm, past the curious, usually drooling, dogs, through the hall and kitchen, out the garage, and into the kennel.  In the morning, we’d unlatch the kennel and she’d wander out, stretching one foot and then the other, then one wing and then the other, and do whatever it is that ducks (that don’t know they’re ducks) do for the day.  But she never wandered far from the house, certainly not to the pond, though she must have wanted to.

I still smile when I recall the first hard rain we had that spring, when the dusty potholes on the driveway filled into shallow ponds, and Duck Duck spent the morning diving under the cloudy water and surfacing, slapping to the next puddle whenever she splashed the water out from the one she was in.

Duck Duck made it to the next autumn, and then another storm blew through.  It was early evening, and the high winds blew the chicken coop door shut, and the front porch was too unsheltered.  When it had passed, we went to call the Duck Duck and the chickens back, but they had already roosted for the night, and once they roost, they won’t come out, no matter who calls them.  The next morning, we were missing a chicken and Duck Duck.  We did not see her again.

Each spring now, Jim threatens to bring home more fowl, and I steadfastly refuse.  It isn’t just the mess, or our 100 percent mortality rate.  No wait, that probably is it.

There’s no way to guarantee both safety and freedom for animals here.  Some day, a storm will blow through, or you will be gone the one evening the owl goes hunting earlier than usual.  Maybe a hungry coyote decides to pass through.  It happens, so you accept it and try to limit your losses.  But you grin, when you hear that a neighbor has erected a makeshift hunting blind (once it was a construction crane extended to its full height, uncamouflaged) in the middle of his Kansas field, for the sole purpose of picking off coyotes and other predators.  And you silently wish the marksman good luck. 

One of these days we’ll have ducks again. But I’m going to need a few more dog kennels.