I raised a @#%! Duck!
And learned a tough lesson in mitigating risks.
Yes I raised a duck, in fact two. It all started innocently enough when a friend was buying hatchlings of turkeys and ducks to raise on their farm outside of town. My first mistake was to even look in the box, the second was to take a picture on my phone, and last was sending it to my seventeen year old daughter. These things were amazingly cute for being a day out of the egg and already having earned airmiles arriving for sale the next day across the country. The immediate reply back was “I want one”. Haha, we don’t live on a farm, we live in the middle of the city in an urban setting, hardly a place to imagine raising or keeping ducks. But then the offer came, if we wanted to raise two from ducklings to maturity, in the fall they could be returned to the farm (where they would be pets, not dinner……or so we were told). I could tell you how I though it was a great lesson in responsiblity for my daughter to learn how to raise and care for ducks, but the truth was closer to I just thought it was cool to imagine raising two ducks. I mean how hard could it be? We had four kids, two dogs, a cat, and a rabbit, how much more trouble could a pair of ducks be? And so began the journey of Bocephus and Iggy and the year we raised ducks.
Bocephus was the larger of the two and my daughter chose that name at her boy friend’s preference, the other seemed to be a more belligerent little runt tough guy, so I named him Iggy after everyone’s favourite belligerent little tough guy, Iggy Pop. We were ill prepared, but had an experienced farmer directing us to a local supply house to buy the necessary food, dispenser, water dish, and most importantly, the life giving heat lamp by which they would need to survive the first month in the garage. I rigged it all up in the corner of the garage while my wife was out because she didn’t seem to share my aspirations to be an urban farmer.
Now I should point out that ducks themselves where cheap, I mean silly cheap, like $4 each or something, but it was the rest of the junk that was more like $100 before everthing was set up. But hey, we had ducks in our garage, and they were freaking cute. They would chirp when you entered the garage in the morning happy to see you, and would go bonkers when you feed them…..and they ate……and ate. This is also where I should also mention that whoever said “Loose as a goose”, clearly had never been around ducks. I mean it was amazing how fast it went through them, they would not even be finished eating before the projectile defecating would start. We learned in time to even anticipate it (and get the hell out of the way), the head goes down, the but comes up, and then boom, they could spray the wall of the enclosure two feet away and foot up. Apparently ducks don’t urinate, so it’s just one explosive expletive mess.
I should also mention we started this project in early March, and while it was still rather cool outside, but by late April as the days grew warmer, so did the rank smell in the garage. I can’t empathize enough the intensity two ducks can make in a closed garage on a warm day. Walking into the garage was the equivalent of assault and battery on your olfactory glands, it could actually make your eyes water. It also certainly wasn’t endearing my wife on the whole concept, as the garage was for her car, not mine. But I came to like the whole ritual of checking on them in the morning and feeding them as they chattered away delighted to be fed and watered. And like a good farmer, each night I would make sure the heat lamps was adjusted just so and they they had everything they needed.
This is where I tell you they actually had distinctly different personalities and even became very protective of each other (perhaps just a natural instinct in a home with four teenagers, two dogs, a cat, and a rabbit!). If you picked one up, it would become quiet in your hand but the other would squawk up a storm telling you off, and it would immediately reverse if you switched ducks. I was also constantly warning people not to hold them without being concious of the business end, for obvious reasons. It was that above picture that I originally claimed had been tweeted to me with the caption “One wrong move and the duck dies” explained clearly as an extortion note from the dogs for more kibble. Ironically, it was the younger of our two Shi’Tzu’s, a puppy himself, Tazo, that befriended the ducks, and would constantly engage them to play with him. I think they actually came to like him, for they would actually follow him, they just never took too kindly to his propensity to sniff their buts. Really Taz, not a good idea anyways, trust me.
That first time I filled the little pool with water for the ducks, I learned where the expression “they took to it like ducks to water”. I have never seen any creature more happy or more naturally take to water like two little ducks. They freakin loved it, and would spend any amount of time playing in the water. Later I built a ramp in and out of the pool for them and they would freely come and go as they pleased. The plan had always been to move them to a pen in the back yard when they were ready and warm enough to survive without the heat lamp, as we have a large fully fenced in 1/2 acre lot, the fence alone was a good six feet all around and with small dogs all holes long since secured and sealed to keep puppies from escaping. The idea was they would be free to range during the day when we were around and then penned at night inside a secured enclosure.
By June it had warmed up and both Bocephus and Iggy had lost that yellow ducking coloured down coat and become closer to the brilliant white that they would be as mature Peking Ducks. That and the fact that the garage on a warm day had become intererable, the smell almost like some toxic ammonia wastedump. So hence I fashioned up one of the dog pen carrier’s so they could sleep inside of it, and secured this stainless steel pen around that up against one of the fences next to the house and then capped all that off with a 4x8 peice of trellis that covered the entire top. The ducks couldn’t get out, and nothing was getting in. I can still recall my relief that next morning following their first night outside without the heat lamp, and seeing them coming running out to be fed as I approached in the morning. With this also being my daughter’s graduation year, it quickly became a challenge to schedule care of the ducks between the various social events and parties, though for the most part she was great and even cleaned that pen and their bedding often (which is not a job I would wish on anyone!).
The ducks themselves had settled into a routine and ate ferociously as they gained weight, and it was funny to watch them waddle around amongst the dogs. They would often dig holes in the ground and lawn to eat grubs and beetles, and as a result I had to constantly move their pen along the fence to save the lawn. It was that in mind on a rainy morning in June when I rounded the corner of house feed in hand to tend to my flock when I remember seeing a big hole dug in the pen, and can clearly recall both the the first thought of “wow that’s a big hole the ducks’s dug”, and then then too the sad realization; “the ducks didn’t dig that hole”. It was in fact a hole dug under my the stainless steel enclosure, and you could actually see the sharp claw marks in the dirt and it was obvious that whatever it had been, it was dug from the outside in. I spent two hours in the pouring rain searching my yard and then the neighbourhood on the off chance chance the ducks had somehow escaped and were just cowering under a bush, or hiding under a deck, but it was to no avail, our precious ducks had vanished without so much as a feather left behind. I had learned the the hard way what every farmer knows, that keeping a fox out of a hen house is not a task taken lighly. Nor was the task of telling my daughter that our experiment had come to an unexpected and sad end. I had no idea there were foxes within the city’s limits nor that they could likely smell my ducks from as much as a mile away. I still find it inconceivable that he managed to slip in out over a six foot fence and abscond with our ducks and not leave a feather disturbed in his wake, but then the expression is and always has been, sly like a fox.
The lesson learned:
Clearly we survived, and life moved on once the appropriate amount of tears had been shed, but the life lesson remains. That no matter how much time and care you may put into nuturing and growing something, it can all change in an instant, and turn on a dime. Bad things happen, and often when you least expect them. I don’t and never will regret the decision to try something new, but do regret not having done more to protect something that meant so much to me. That I failed to anticipate the possible risks and take adequate safeguards against them is my failure and mine alone, and compounding that is that my failure resulted in others suffering more than me. It’s management’s job to anticipate and identify risks and hazards, and draw plans to eliminate, mitigate, or negate such possibilities. In life, you either learn from such leasons or you are condemned to repeat them. Be it a sly fox, or a faulty hard drive, nature doesn’t give a shit how much you care, it only respects that which you planned and were prepared.
To Iggy and Bocephus, sorry buds, Taz misses ya and so do I, RIP.
