I just heard from a friend I met through the blog ... a fellow duck lover ... that one of his Cayuga ducks was killed this morning on his pond. It brought me right back to the day we lost our first Cayuga, and it struck me that, as jaded as the world seems sometimes, I'm proud to know other people who have the kind of heart that can be broken by a duck.
There's something about taking care of these funny, helpless creatures that runs the gamut from entertaining to exasperating to emotionally draining. As our original flock dwindled slowly from ten to six, and then suddenly from six to three ... and as we discovered that 15 ducklings is, in practical terms, at least three times as much work and worry as our original eight ... I sometimes question why we ever took on the care and feeding of ducks. They can be hard work, and you worry about them. Then you forget to worry and something goes terribly wrong. Every time we've lost a duck I've felt sad and angry, and guilty that I hadn't done things differently or taken better care of them somehow.
Ev always reminds me that the ducks are happy and that the smartest of them have survived over a year despite living in a place where there are all kinds of predators ... Darwin and all that ... and that they wouldn't be happy if we kept them safely penned up all the time. I know she's right, but it's still hard to see one less duck coming to the house for feed in the morning. My heart goes out to my friend, Fritz.
6 comments:
Ev,
You were looking at my baby's blog and I saw you still exist! You are still as funny as ever. Your brother says hi.
Congratulations on Katie setting off to college. How can this be? Isn't her given name Baby Katie?
Luv,
The First (not big) Katie
Hi Katie!
Sometimes it Lori that's funny but if no one's looking I take credit for her work. That's what love is all about.
Steve sent me the link to Hannah's blog. Geez! She's an adult! I'll be following her adventures and living vicariously, so I hope she has a good time. How long is she going to be in India?
10 weeks, one of which is up today. She's 21 years old today, can you believe it? I know I was a child bride and all, but how do I have a 21 year old kid?
She's trying to work on getting more people tested for AIDS. Everything is so far down on the down low there, that docs do not even offer testing. So she worked on writing a program to educate docs during the school year and now they are going out into the community to try to get people tested.
And here I am doing things like reading the Twilight series and spending hours on FB. Glad someone is working on that whole "change the world" thing for me.
India is surely making the news this week. It's a great time to be working on the AIDS crisis there. Good for Hannah! Woohoo!
Who wouldn't feel angry & sad at the death of a duck? Especially a duck that you raised from ducklinghood. Anyone with any empathy (this excludes my siblings, apparently) would feel sad if a duck didn't come home.
I'm crushed that Pilchard Piecrust hasn't come home yet, and I haven't met him or his parents and we live an ocean apart. But, every day, I hope to wake up to a message in my account that he's been found, safe & sound. (Join the Pilchard Piecrust group, if you haven't already)
Sometimes I wish I was less empathetic, but I know that I wouldn't be happy not feeling sad when my pets or other people's die or disappear. The foster kitties have helped our household with our Eli grief, but it's still there...as it should be. She was a great dog and she should be mourned.
Flippy, I hear ya. Eli pre-dated (not predated) all the rescues. Now, after all the animals you guys have rescued and loved, I still think of Eli as the matriarch or something ...
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