A Dead Duck

Mallard ducklings, AKA "Have my parents lost their minds?"

There are hard lessons in life, and one of them is the fragility of it. Mallard ducklings are no exception. As a doting older brother, I felt it was my duty to protect my younger sister Karin from prematurely dealing with the tragic demise of one of her new pets. I cannot say that I was fond of my new roommates. I had a basement apartment in my parents house and once my mother discovered how messy a cage of four ducklings could be, they were banished downstairs where clean up could be easier. As they grew, they quickly went from peeping to loud quacking. In all fairness, they did not have lips, however, their table manners were atrocious. Cracked corn was everywhere. Let me tell you that the expression, "slicker than duck poop" is not a metaphor. It is quite literal. I was sure my parents had lost their minds, and that this sudden farm endeavor was due to my sister being the bratty youngest.

Welcome to my farm apartment!  Mind your step!

However, the little mallards, imprinted to my sister and following her around the yard, were exceptionally cute. As her new pets, Karin was quite fond of them. In the days before the internet, as hard as it is to imagine, it was not easy to have access to all the knowledge of humankind. Whether it was that their heat lamp did not dispel the damp basement air, or from the vicious pecking from their siblings, one duck started looking somewhat peaked.

David and Scott

One of my best friends, David, was visiting me. So that we do not sound like two insensitive cads, let me say that we were huge Monty Python fans. That background fact becomes crucial to the story. Karin was in school, so her ducklings were quacking away in their indoor pen in the corner behind the pool table. David observed that one of them was not looking well. We gently picked him up and removed him from the pen. His little feathered head flopped to one side. David said, "that, my friend, is a dead duck." We knew that this was a childhood tragedy, and perhaps it was our nervousness that brought out our geeky launch into a combination of "The Dead Parrot" sketch and the "Bring Out Your Dead" scene from "The Holy Grail." It quickly became obvious that the poor duckling fit all the adjectives in the sketch, and that unlike the scene, he was not feeling better and going for a walk anytime soon.

David and I rapidly moved from nervous humor to serious worry. We discussed the harsh reality of life and death and decided that we needed to spare Karin from this for a little while longer. Like many parents and caretakers, we found ourselves in the car with a little shoebox containing the corpse of the fragile pet that we hoped to replace with a look-alike. The three bears of Goldilocks-fame had it easy. We drove frantically from farm store to farm store. These ducklings were too old. Those ducklings were too little. Too fat. Too yellow. Too big. Too thin. Too brown. However, the one we had with us was too dead.

Finally we picked one that was a close stand-in and raced home. I am glad I did not get pulled over for speeding, with one little box quacking and another ominously silent. The explanation would have been a hard sell. David and I barely got the new duckling into the enclosure before Karin got home from school. We had a hidden shoebox for a private ceremony in the woods after she was busy with her little mallard friends. Karin was an observant child and noticed some differences. We were overly effusive about how quickly ducklings grew and changed, sometimes within a single day. We prided ourselves in our successful ruse that allowed childhood innocence to continue a little while longer.

Unfortunately, a month later, Karin was home when her little quartet lost another member and became a little trio. She dealt with the sad event with the resilience of a child. David and I did not regret our extreme effort, even if it only delayed the inevitable. It was a worthy effort put to a good cause. Happily, the rest of Karin's flock survived and eventually moved to their outdoor enclosure and put on their adult mallard clothes. Our backyard had a big low-lying area that was subject to flooding that provided them with a fake lake to practice splashing about in. It also provided an area for them to land in when they returned home for a few years to follow, even if one was a bit of an imposter.

Have you seen our Karin?