There aren’t many logical reasons for driving around in the dark at three a.m. desperately looking for a quiet pond or lake to dump a duck that can only be classified as utterly demonic. I blame my mother.
The summer I turned 15 was the kind of summer that made your t-shirt cling inappropriately to your bra, that made your shorts climb north towards your chest despite your best efforts to wrangle those suckers back towards where they belonged, that made all of my peers worry over the smell that emitted from their bodies during those summer parties where we desperately pondered if so and so in the corner would kiss us before the night was out.
But more importantly, it was the summer my mother brought home the ducks. My family had just moved into a newly built home and the biting smell of paint and wood still clung to the house. The backyard boasted a small lake. A lake not big enough for speed boats and waverunners like I hoped, but a lake large enough for a fishing pontoon and, as my mother insisted, big enough for ducks.
So when she came home from a grocery store trip dragging a liquor box containing two small ducklings, my family was exasperated but not surprised. I wish I could say that those ducklings weren’t cute given the absolute hell we went through later at their expense, but at first they were ADORABLE.
Have you seen a duckling? It’s like an elementary school aged child before he hits that awful middle school adolescent awkwardness. Everything a duckling does is stinking cute. Even pooping is cute on a duckling. I’m serious. Try to get mad at a duckling taking a squirt. You just CAN’T.
My brother and I happily agreed to feed and care for the darlings, but like elementary schoolers destined to become braces riddled, awkwardly shaped, pimple wracked, sweaty middle schoolers, our ducklings were destined for awkward changes in both the physical and emotional realms.
Before we could blink, our tiny ducklings transformed into horrendously ugly adolescents, and then adult ducks. These things were the Freddy Kruegers of the animal kingdom. They reigned as Kings of the Supremely Ugly over all duckdom. Have I mentioned they were ugly? (See picture of the Muscovy duck below. Yes. That's what they looked like.)
The lake that once made them so happy was now abandoned for the roof of our house, where the male duck took up a permanent position as official neighborhood terrorist. The female contented herself with a quietly ugly life behind some bushes.
The male, however, couldn’t be stopped. If anyone come remotely near our house or, God forbid, dare to come down our driveway, the male duck would hurtle his body from the roof towards the offender in a furious blur of feather and beak all the while issuing a sound from his mouth that surely only Dante heard in the sixth layer of hell. If you didn’t move quickly enough, you fell victim to numerous pecks, bites, and scratches at the hand of the raptor like talons on his webbed feet. Screaming and running delighted him all the more. The sadistic bastard.
It didn’t matter that we were family to this duck. That we took him in, fed him the best duck feed money could buy, let him swim in our bath tub when he was a baby. He attacked me and my family without discrimination.
Getting from the car and safely inside became something of a daily drill. Belongings? Check. Hair tied safely back? Check. Dangling earrings removed for fear of a ripped earlobe? Check.
My brother and I placed bets over who could make it into the house with the fewest pecks. He still owes me ten bucks. You hear me, Jeffery?
My mother clung stubbornly to her initial desires to have ducks living at the lake, but soon, the male’s antics became too much to bear. He was starting to go for the eyes, and personally, I was starting to think that I could be the only girl at my high school with an advanced enough palate to enjoy foi gras.
Finally, after a nasty scratch, my mother decided that something must be done. I suggested a twelve gauge and some steel shot. Apparently, my mother doesn’t share my sense of humor. The question remained how one ethically and humanely gets rid of a duck.
Late night/early morning brainstorm sessions never lead to great ideas.
“If we could just find him a new home, another lake to swim in, I would feel so much better about the whole thing,” my mother said.
I could feel the devil poking me in the back when I replied, “Why can’t we? There are plenty of lakes and ponds around here. Why not just…drop him off somewhere?”
My mother had that late-night gleam of slight hysteria in her eyes when she looked back at me and said, “Find a box.”
Getting that duck into the box took about two hours of sweat and blood, but eventually, one of us literally tackled and wrestled him to the ground while the other quickly scooped him into the box.
Keeping him in the box was another story, and as my mother drove, I did my best to wrangle what was, at this point, a very angry duck.
You would think that finding a small body of water in a county you’ve lived in for over ten years would be easy. Not when you have a mother who, despite her fervor to rid her family of this beast, has a bleeding heart and insists on finding exactly the right pond or lake for a duck. One was too small. One was too close to a road. Another was too large and she worried about bigger ducks picking on him. I say it would have served him right.
My patience was wearing thin, and the duck was undoubtedly going to free himself from the box at any second. “Mom, it’s almost 3 a.m. Could we just pick a spot already?”
“Hold on,” she said, “I think I know one that’s just right.”
“Thanks a heap, Goldilocks.”
When she pulled up to the pond, it was, as she had promised, absolutely perfect. The duck must have sensed it too because he suddenly stilled under my hand.
My mom parked and then looked at me expectantly. “Well?”
“All right, all right…I’ll do it.”
I prayed we weren’t doing anything illegal. I could just imagine a police officer questioning us as to why we were parked by a pond at three in the morning with a duck in a box.
I slipped out of the van and walked as quickly as I could towards the edge of the pond. Sensing impending freedom, the duck began to rustle and right before I could set the box down to release him, he decided to forgo any polite goodbyes and took to flight. On his way, he gave me a vicious farewell peck on my shoulder.
Exhausted, I marched back to the van. “And good riddance.”
My mother made a small choking noise.
“Please tell me you aren’t crying,” I said glancing over at her.
She wasn’t crying. Her entire body shook as she erupted into frenzied giggles. Soon, tears of laughter were streaming down my own cheeks and my abdomen felt as if I had just finished a round of intense full body crunches. We sped away like two criminals fleeing the scene.
The ducks are long gone, and when I visit my parents now the lake is quiet, but more importantly, the roof is quiet. Every now and again though, my mom will begin, “Do you remember when I brought those ducks home?” and I’m right back by that pond at three a.m.
If I can thank that duck for anything, it’s for a memory made.
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