Some time ago, I got it into my head that things would be just right around here if we added three ducks into the mix.
My cousin’s little flock of Indian Runner Ducks had grown and she said we were welcome to come and choose ours as soon as we were ready. I read all the articles on ducks that I could find and I blocked my ears when people told me that they were noisy or messy. Some people just want to spoil other people’s fun, and anyhow, I had made up my mind. Also, there is absolutely no room for being realistic when dreams are being born. At least that’s what I think.
These ducks of ours, they were going to increase the beauty factor of our home, eat all the pests, fertilize the garden and lay us eggs and I couldn’t wait to collect them. On the 1st of May, just the thing my husband was wanting to be doing on a public holiday, we brought them home. That’s a whole ‘nother story and it was nothing like my romantic notions had built it up to be. The ducks were not happy about being here; in fact, they were terrified.
We called the white, robust male with the green-yellow beak Charamba after Makanakaishe Charamba who is one of Zimbabwe’s fastest runners with a personal best, mind you, of 200 metres in less than 20 seconds. The brown and white female with wise eyes and warrior stripes on her cheeks we called India. We haven’t managed to produce a girl child to carry my mother-in-law’s name and so we named the little black duck with the iridescent wings Penelope. The fact that Penelope also means ‘duck’ made it doubly fitting.
We were woken on night one and night two and every night, thereafter, for four and a half months, because another one of my clever ideas was to make the duck enclosure right next to our bedroom. Mark and I learnt to sleep with pillows over our heads and although we were frustrated with the broken sleep, we were also a little transfixed by the Lovelies. Many a night one or both of us stood peering through the curtains, unable to take our eyes off of them as they frolicked in the silvery reflections of a midnight winter’s full moon. Their location was also perfect in that whilst sitting at their desks doing school work, the children were able to watch and enjoy every movement from the way they cock their heads sideways to watch the sky to the way the water runs off their backs. The minutes would tick by as we watched their antics and engaged in serious, unofficial Indian Runner research. We had ducks and they really were making life better in ways we hadn’t considered.
It took a few weeks for them to leave the safety of their enclosure and enter the garden, and when that happened I was thrilled to my bones. Free range ducks! What more could a person want? They quacked and pecked at unseen foes and we all lived in bliss until I realised my ducks were not only wakeful and loud during the night as well as the day, but they were ripping plants apart, eating the poppies and succulents, pooping far more than I realised they might and they were not laying eggs. Not a single egg. I began to panic. If something didn’t change our garden would look like the Karoo right here in Highlands and we were getting tired from all the nightly wakings.
I decided to admit defeat, and messaged my cousin to tell her that I was surrendering. I had lost the optimism necessary to keep ducks in the suburbs. She was gracious and unflustered and suggested a few solutions. She was just thinking aloud, but one idea was to separate them so that she could keep one and send the others to someone else. The other option was to let them go to a friend of mine who wanted ducks. From being quite sure that we couldn’t sleep another night sharing a wall and windows with quacking, pooping poppy-robbers, I had a sudden change of heart.
I had watched these three become a little team. One of them played lots, one watched the sky for danger and one thought about where to go next. They were a family and they needed one another and I would not let them get separated. Also, the thought that a friend of mine would succeed (or not) with ducks that I was giving up on was unthinkable.
Thankfully, the whole family agreed that we would find a solution and that getting rid of the ducks was not part of it. We figured out a suitable location further from the house and one day soon after that Mark arrived home with a dog kennel strapped on to the roof rack of the car. I kissed him like he’d brought me a diamond ring and then my craftsman dad created a luxury duck apartment out of it. As if knowing we were figuring out a good plan, the ducks mellowed a little. Instead of partying the night away, I would wake to hear them chirruping gently to one another in their cosy, straw filled shack. I smiled into the night as I wondered at the sleepy contentment in their individual voices. The ducks were staying and they knew it.
A few minutes before we moved them into their new space, greenish eyes full of shooting stars looked into my own plain, unknowing eyes and my little boy informed me that he had a surprise for me. I followed him, silently, without a single clue of what lay ahead and when he bent low and pointed under a little bush, I bent down low too:
Two perfect eggs,
Humble and blue.
Lying there in secret,
A holy thank you.
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