The Last Duckling

The duck glid­ed to a smooth land­ing in our swim­ming pool last May. Wild-eyed and froth­ing at the mouth, our Amer­i­can Bull­dog Zoey ran back and forth along the sand­stone skirt bark­ing fran­ti­cal­ly while the duck pad­dled lazy cir­cles in the water just out of her reach. After taunt­ing Zoey for an hour, she flew away. The next sev­er­al morn­ings she returned and the same scene played out.

I sent a cell phone video with a text mes­sage to our kids. “This duck vis­its our pool every day for the sole pur­pose of tor­ment­ing Zoey.”

Ducks had tak­en over my daughter-in-law’s par­ents’ pool years ear­li­er, and she knew what I was in for. “Oh no,” she replied. “She’ll lay eggs. You’ll have poop everywhere.”

She was right on both counts. I found the nest tucked under bush­es behind the pool. It sealed my fate. Dis­turb­ing a duck’s nest is a crim­i­nal mis­de­meanor in Cal­i­for­nia. Once she drops an egg, her squatter’s rights are absolute. She owns the place until she decides to leave.

The quan­ti­ty of poop defied the laws of biol­o­gy and physics. The duck drib­bled run­ny lakes of it every­where she went. Poop soon cov­ered most of the hard­scape. Oscar, the pool man, said it would stain the stone, so I slogged out to the pool and hosed and swept and hosed and swept while the poop machine float­ed in the water, quack­ing con­tent­ed­ly. This went on for four weeks.

Then every­thing changed. The morn­ing of June 10 the duck led sev­en lit­tle fur­balls into the water. I’d nev­er seen a baby duck up close. I stood by the pool and stared at them for a long time.

That day hos­ing and sweep­ing didn’t seem so bad.

Zoey had lost inter­est in the duck, and our oth­er dog, P.D., made friends with it, so I thought the duck­lings were safe in our back­yard. I was wrong.

The day after they were born, mama duck marched them across the yard to the frog pond. An hour lat­er, I found her stand­ing beside our rail fence on a hill­side strug­gling to main­tain her foot­ing. Trapped between chain link sta­pled to the fence to keep the dogs inside and the fine-mesh net that keeps the rat­tlers out, a duck­ling hopped around like a ping pong ball. It couldn’t get out and mama couldn’t free it.

The slope is steep and falls 100 feet to a rock shelf. At 73 with dou­ble knee replace­ments, I had no busi­ness climb­ing down that hill, but I was the only one there. Hold­ing on to the fence to keep my bal­ance, I slid down the hill, reached into the net­ting, and grabbed the lit­tle fur­ball. Where­upon mama duck flew into my face, whack­ing me between the eyes with her bill and box­ing my ears with her wings.

I fell, which on that steep grade was like jump­ing out of an air­plane back­wards with­out a para­chute. The fall didn’t kill me sole­ly because the only tree on the hill stood fif­teen feet direct­ly below me. I land­ed on it, impaled face up, its bro­ken branch­es spear­ing my back.  Spew­ing a string of curs­es, I climbed down stiffly and clawed my way back up the slope.

At the top, I found the duck­ling swim­ming in the frog pond while mama duck ran back and forth in the yard, des­per­ate­ly search­ing for the oth­ers. A line of tall podocar­pus trees stands along the fence line there. I heard the duck­lings cheep­ing some­where behind them, fought my way through their branch­es, and saw the babies run­ning in cir­cles in my neighbor’s yard. They’d appar­ent­ly slipped through a crease in the snake fence and couldn’t find their way back. Mama was too big to fol­low them through the hole and not smart enough to fly over the trees to join them.

Curs­ing again, I grabbed a tote bag from the pool house and climbed over the fence. The duck­lings thought I want­ed to kill them and ran amok. Push­ing my tita­ni­um knees to their lim­it, I juked, jived, and bee-bopped all over hell. I caught four, but couldn’t find the oth­er two. Exhaust­ed, I climbed back over the fence and returned the four to mama duck.

Lying in bed that night with my back-side paint­ed in iodine from neck to ankles, I couldn’t stop think­ing about the miss­ing duck­lings out there in the dark, lost and afraid.

In the morn­ing, only four babies swam with mama. One of those I’d saved was gone. I spent the day search­ing the yard, the slope, and the neighbor’s yard, all to no avail.

The next morn­ing, there were only three. The day after, two. Then one. I blamed mama duck. She would have lost all the duck­lings the day after they hatched if I hadn’t retrieved them. Now, her appar­ent neglect was killing the ones I’d saved.

The last duck­ling held on through the week. Each morn­ing I awoke with dread but was relieved to find it by its mama’s side.

On June 20, we found a big rat­tlesnake in our back­yard. It made me won­der. Hawks cir­cle the sky. Owls roost in our red­woods. Coy­otes prowl the horse trails. Maybe mama duck had done her best. Maybe she was heart­bro­ken, too.

Weeks passed. The baby grew to half mama’s size with the brown-speck­led mark­ings of a female mal­lard. In August, she took wing on her maid­en flight, glid­ed south, and bank-turned back to the pool.

The fol­low­ing week, mama flew away and didn’t return. Alone for the first time, the two-month-old duck hun­kered down on the hard­scape at night­fall, look­ing for­lorn. Feel­ing sor­ry for her, I tossed her pieces of bread the next morn­ing. She gob­bled it up. I gave her more at twi­light. By the end of the week, she was eat­ing it out of my hand.

When I told my six-year-old grand­daugh­ter about feed­ing the duck bread, she crin­kled her nose. “You shouldn’t do that, Papaw.” Bread doesn’t pro­vide the nutri­ents ducks require, she said. “It’s like eat­ing Big Macs all the time. It’ll make her sick.”

A lit­tle zool­o­gy-genius, she knows every­thing about ani­mals, but I checked with the inter­net experts just to be sure. They agreed I was killing my duck with junk food.

I bought fifty pounds of Puri­na duck pel­lets. The duck wouldn’t touch the stuff. Instead, she snarfed up left-over dog food from P.D.’s bowl. My grand­daugh­ter said the dog food was okay, but not healthy enough to sus­tain her. I tried mix­ing duck pel­lets with dog food. She wolfed it down, and from there on, she ran from the pool to meet me when­ev­er I opened the patio door to come and feed her.

She stayed with us through August and September.

One morn­ing in Octo­ber, she flew away but returned at twi­light. She came and went sev­er­al times over the next week. Then, a big wind storm ripped through Hid­den Hills. When it was over, she was gone. Wor­ried that she was injured, I searched but found no trace of her. She prob­a­bly migrat­ed to a warmer cli­mate, I told myself, hop­ing it was true.

Months rolled by with no sign of her.

In Feb­ru­ary, I was sit­ting in my home office when a female and two male mal­lards land­ed in the pool. I went to the win­dow and stared hard at the female. She’s prob­a­bly not my duck, I thought. There are hun­dreds of mal­lards in the area and they all look alike. Before I could get to the door, they flew away and didn’t return.

In March, I was stand­ing at the kitchen win­dow when a male and female mal­lard touched down in the pool. Same female as before, I guessed, down to one boyfriend for the mat­ing sea­son. When I opened the patio door to go out to the pool for a clos­er look, the female scur­ried out of the water, ran all the way across the yard, stopped in front of me, looked up, and cocked her head to one side. “Quack!”

A wave of relief washed over me. “Glad to see you, too,” I said softly.

I set a bowl of her spe­cial canine duck food mix out by the pool. She and her boyfriend lin­gered most of the day, then flew away.

She hasn’t returned.

Yet.

Last year, mama duck estab­lished her nest in May. I check the pool first thing every morning.