Well we've gone in a completely different direction... and I suppose the ducks were the very last straw.
We were living on an acre plus lot, far enough away from the nearest big city that the next thing past our neighborhood was all farms and State park lands. We'd been growing most of our own food there for quite some time, adding more and more perennial food crops and fruit trees every year. Our ponds and landscaping were well established, and our neighbors all enjoyed the bounty of our surplus. Everything was just peachy... until that fateful day when we returned home with the ducks.
It was just three, the sign said "Mallard", and we hadn't really planned on even getting them, but after succumbing to the tweats of the last six Rhode Island Reds in the middle of the local TSC the ducks didn't seem that big a deal that day. Honestly though, I just went in there for dog food.
So we take everybody home and begin our crash course in backyard poultry, which thankfully began with a quick stumble in the door here. Our chickies and ducks somehow survived our mistakes and good intentions and began giving us eggs and entertanment like we never dreamed. The ducks however were not content with just that. They had to try our patience and frazzle our nerves in yet other ways that we'd never dreamed.
At first it was rather funny. They'd fly up onto the roof and walk back and forth over the kitchen skylights. Our dogs would dutifully go completely mental at the bottom side up view of the ducks showing them their azzes. Funny thing was that when on terra firma the dogs took no notice of them at all, although the ducks did develop a nasty habit of chasing the dogs anytime they tried drinking from "their" pond. Of course while they hung out there they also pooped, and to be honest the dogs just wouldn't shut up, so eventually we'd have to go outside and use the hose to entice them to another spot.
I'm pretty sure that was the point at which the neighbors began to question our sanity. We lived on a corner and more than once someone almost ended up driving into our fence at the sight of a man or a woman standing in front of this suburban split level, watering their ducks on the roof.
Once they got their bath they'd climb up onto the ridgeline and hang out enjoying the breeze as they picked and preened and eventually settled in to simply surveying their domain that lay all about them.
At first glance the immediate effect was that of buzards sitting atop the proverbial outhouse, and I suppose that that just added to our growing ahhh ... mystique?
The ducklings had started out life at our house living in a 75 gallon aquarium lined with wood shavings. Every
day of course the water that had been in their waterer ended up soaking the wood shavings, which when mixed with the requisite duck poop and splashed all over the aquarium walls, made for a necessary daily chore that nobody relished. A propper house was built for them, but we couldn't figure out how to keep the skunks and coons and cats from molesting them at night, and the idea of leaving them at risk was more than my wife could bear, so even as they grew we still had to go wrangle the ducks and walk them in the back door each night whereupon we'd grab the suspecting but not exactly loving it duckies and plop them down into their nitely bed. The following morning of course someone had to be there right after the chickens arose to reverse the process and lift the ducks from their tank, set them on the floor and watch as they gathered their dignity and made for the back door, ready to begin their day of dog torment and neighbor scaring.
Oh they had other things to keep them busy too of course, and it got so that there wasn't anybody on our rather expansive country block that wasn't aware that we had ducks. Actually looking back, I think it was more like the ducks had us. Every couple of days they'd disappear and da wife would get a call letting her know wherethe three little pigs were wallowing. Good thing too 'cuz when she'd get home from work and not be able to immediately see them she would panic and begin wandering the 'hood, duck wrangling sticks in hand, quacking to herself as she walked through neighbor's yards poking and scanning up under their shrubs and bushes. Again, just adding to the "mystique" of the crazy people on the corner. That's right... we'd become them. That house that every neighborhood posesses. The one that ya never let your kids trick or treat at.
Actuall it wasn't really that bad. The neighborhood kids loved our yard 'cuz they knew that anytime they came by they'd get a chance to feed the birds and fishies and play with our overly energetic dogs.
The nightly chore of duck wrangling eventually got so that if I happened to be busy in my office (the rear most room of the house from where the ducks would enter and leave) and loose track of the time the ducks would come to the door and give a sticatto knocking with their bills to remind me of my error. As if to further express their displeasure with my irresponsibility they also began to take flight (yes in our house, or my cathedral ceilinged office to be more precise) in order to alight on the edge of their tank before flopping down inside to begin their nightly fun of emptying their water and fouling their feed.
All was reasonably well until momma began laying eggs.
Turns out we had purchased two drakes and a single hen, and while I understand that this is generally not condusive to the hen surviving their amorous intentions, ours seemed to work it out. Nature always finds a way, and so the boys had a kind of alpha male dispute that was settled where one became the usual and the other an occassional interloper. Mom meanwhile began finding new and ever more creative places to lay her eggs and settle her nest. Were it not for the boys hanging idly about there were times that we never would have found her hiding spot. Unfortunately for us this also led to the three musketeers sometimes not returning home until well after dark, which of course would have wifee on high alert, which of course, given the nature of poop, would mean that my son and I were also put on high alert until the happy wanderers returned. Many a night she would repeat her neighborhood searches, flashlight in hand, oblivious to the concept of metes and bounds, and more importantly the effect that she had on unsuspecting neighbors by wandering through their yards that way well after dark... quacking.
Ah yes... the mystique grows and grows.
We actually developed a neighborhood watch of sorts, or I should say duck watch. Everybody with a pool soon had our number, and the neighborhood cats soon learned that the ducks were nobody to mess with. One fine day I was contacted by an old woman up the street who asked if I would come fetch my ducks because they were terrorizing her cat. Seems they had run it up a lone cedar tree in her yard and then decided to stand guard at the base, daring it to try and come down. It was hilarious!
I think it was somewhere between them eating the last baby koi and the hatching of their first clutch that we finally realized that we were living just a bit too close to "civilization", and that we'd better pull the trigger on a move that we had dreamed of but never done anything about. Having malls 15 minutes away and the city at our feet used to somehow matter I suppose, but we had secretly realized all along that it was only a matter of time before we had to either flee or face committment to a mental institution at the urging of our neighbors.
So, we loaded up the truck and escaped from Beverly, metaphorically speaking. Moved out to the wilds of Delmarva, heart of the land that franken-chicken built. We're look just as weird here due to our organic gardens and funky bumper stickers for Raw Milk and against the GMO's that grow all around us. The difference is that out here everyone is a lot more respectful of each other's privacy... and ultimately weirdness, so there's more and more like us moving in every day. Now we have neighbors with really big ponds, and they all want some ducks, which we now have something like two dozen of thanks to mom and the boyz. Funny thing is that now that they have ponds all around them, they never leave home at all. The kids were hatched out and learned to swim in the first two hastily built ponds that we put in last winter (and oh wasn't that some fun, but da wife would grant no peace 'til they had their new pools) and now they fly a loop around the yard but never venture more than a stone's throw from our fence line. By this Spring we'll probably have to lease the acreage across the lane to have room for everybody.
"What a long strange trip it's been."
