Samantha skipped home from kindergarten, as do most kinders, but this day was especially delightful because she brought home a duck. Like many elementary classes, children celebrate birthdays with cupcakes, candy, and punch; unlike most, Sammy’s class celebrated with ducklings—from the newly hatched eggs of the classroom incubator the children watched for weeks—far more valuable in her eyes than a cupcake. This handful of feathers, hatched on Sammy’s birthday, earned her the gift of a duck. I approved, without much forethought or serious consideration, and thus began the Year of the Duck.
My spontaneity has always been my downfall; I have a serious problem with saying, “No.” Impromptu events are more exciting to me than anything planned, and so it goes. I knew little about birds, despite my countless biology courses at UCSD, but I was about to learn. All my college biology courses involved studies in microscopic organisms or things that swim in some sort of molecular soup, while the duck experience was the perfect opportunity to study “real” biology. We live in a rural area, surrounded by farms and ranches, and our children belonged to the local 4H club. We could handle a duck.
Our three girls and their elementary friends renamed Quackers multiple times. Naming a duck is vitally important—just as with any offspring—it determines the future demeanor, the future successes or failures in life. Since we could only guess the gender of our duck, the children chose a uni-sex name and which sounded like him. Those first few weeks, the duckling never walked on land. Every little girl in the neighborhood held this thing, snuggling, rocking her collective baby. Passed from little girl to little girl, Quackers slept tucked in the palm of each little girl, waking periodically to nibble at the wild birdseed in the hand, then drifted back to sleep. We had no shortage of little girls (and little boys) from the neighborhood that was willing to caress him/her; Quackers had no shortage of warm hands in which to sleep. At night, an old mouse cage lined with baby blankets served as temporary home, until morning when the parade of small children came to hold. Those precious days, just as with any baby, did not last long.
In the wild, mother ducks fold their ducklings under their maternal wings, instinctively rubbing their protective oils to prepare them for swimming. We didn’t know about this part, but we knew ducks swim, right? Three days after hatching, surviving, and seemingly thriving in our family, Quackers went swimming in his personal swimming hole—the bathroom sink. He seemed a happy duckling and his tiny webbed feet performed perfectly; our clean towels warmed and dried him. Knowing what I do now, I am amazed this duck survived, as we did everything wrong, i.e. Quackers should not have entered the water for a full month. A search on “how to raise a duck” explained that ducks could drown if they enter the water too early. I decided after, I should do more research before.
Within a month, Quackers outgrew the mouse cage and needed more space to accommodate his copious poop and messy eating. I got a duck feeder from the local feed supply store and Dale built a cage out of chicken wire and surrounded it by hay on all sides. The hay served the dual purpose of warm bedding at night and protection from the numerous predators that roamed our neighborhood. By now, Quackers was no longer the pristine yellow duckling. A complete adolescent, Quackers was cloaked in brown, white, and yellow feathers in varying lengths from floaty down to long, greasy bird feathers, much like the gangly kid in junior high whose clothes don’t fit. Quacker’s neck was too long for his tiny body—did we get a goose or a swan? His legs were too long, his webbed feet too large, but the kids loved him, nonetheless, and he loved them. Our cat did not, however, and all day long, someone had to stand duck-duty, as Ginger our cat, stalked him wherever he waddled. We protected Quackers—either totally caged or with a bodyguard— at all times. Within two months, though, Quackers surpassed Ginger in both height and girth, and both duck and cat quacked and meowed, respectively, at the back door begging to enter our house. Disgusting duck poop splattered over the deck, no way was I going to let this duck in our house. The cat, maybe, but she did not leave the same trail. Of course, kids being kids snuck in the duck. I knew. Not hard to figure out. I added one more job to my growing list of chores, that of deck (duck?) maintenance by hosing off his giant droppings into our garden.
Meanwhile, Quackers roamed our yard consuming bountiful amounts of grass and seeds and snails and slugs—anything he could find. Soon enough, we stopped buying duck feed because Quackers found an abundance of savory meals as he “finished off” the snails and slugs. One of the few benefits—no slugs, no snails, yet thriving roses from the fertilizer. For at least two months, we tolerated the duck and saw potential advantages to this family addition. The next month things changed…
Love is Complicated 