“I drowned one of the ducks.”
It’s never a good sign when you start out the day by
drowning an aquatic bird.
What? I didn’t do it. Sherwood, my husband and boyfriend of
thirty plus years, did.
But it’s my fault.
I told him what to do, just not often enough or clearly
enough or slowly enough or enough.
When I noticed that our four new ducklings ($3.99 at Tractor
Supply) were starting to walk like Quasimodo, I jumped on the Internet, typed
in “ducks lurching about like a character in a French novel”, eavesdropped on
several duck blogs, and learned that ducklings being raised in giant rubber
buckets occasionally fail to develop proper leg strength. Therapy to develop
proper duck muscles included thirty minutes per day of swimming about in water
of a sufficient depth.
That’s what I told my husband. Thirty minutes.
NOT – place ducklings in bucket of water and leave, until
one drowns, remove remaining ducklings. Confess.
When he confessed what had happened, I said, “You don’t listen.”
He said, “Oh, I listen. I just don’t hear you.”
In truth, Sherwood felt horrible about the accidently
drowning. Especially in light of the fact that he’s been working on a state of
the art duck pen, complete with antique iron tub and surrounding concrete
decking. He’s been working on the duck pen for about a year, because his first
duck construction efforts resembled the work of a drunken computer programmer
and my husband, a computer programmer, doesn’t drink.
Raising baby ducks has a learning curve like everything
else, and duck farming ain’t for sissies. But like all learning curves it’s
extremely helpful if hearing and listening become part of the duck therapy
experience, before . . .
. . . somebody has to
die.
Linda (Duck Out) Zern
