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Every so often, I hear panicked quacking. I rush out to the porch and inevitably find the ducks have managed to separate themselves from their chosen pack. (The three bachelors in one pack, Mr. Duck and his two ladies in the other.) They get in the goat yard then they can’t remember how to get back out. One is separated from the other two and life is not worth living, it’s that desperate and pathetic.
The separation is unbearable, I tell you, UNBEARABLE. There is PANIC. And RUCKUS.
I can’t bear it, either. I have to help. I have to get them together again! The ducks, they are in a panic! (The chickens could teach them a thing or two about calmly finding a spot where you can fit under the gate….. That is, if the chickens and ducks were speaking to each other. They’re not.)
Yesterday, with two of the bachelors inside the goat pen and one outside, I chased the two around the doghouse that the goats used to like to sleep in but which has recently fallen apart, trying to get them to head out of the pen.
I stepped on a rusty nail in the process. Falling apart doghouse = hazard! (It has now been removed.)
(And yes, I was wearing shoes.)
I had the door between the goat pen and the goat yard shut so the other animals couldn’t get in and I had the door between the goat pen and the side yard propped open with my rooster rake.
The door was propped open and yet they just kept standing there.
QUACKING.
Ducks are so hard to help.
They are SEPARATED! The world as they know it has come to an end! Life will never be the same! Oh wait–
A WAY OUT! Off he went…..
….leaving the third one behind because he couldn’t figure out how that just happened.
What we have here is a failure to communicate.
The third duck, watching his two friends disappear. Because they don’t care about him. They’re together! Ducks can be so brutal. And I stepped on a rusty nail for them and everything. And then–
It’s a MIRACLE!!!
But where did his friends go? PANICKED QUACKING. They’ve left him! Disappeared! His life is OVER.
WAIT! There they are. WHEW. Life can go on.
Unless you just stepped on a rusty nail and you’re GOING TO DIE because you haven’t had a tetanus shot.
And then I called the doctor’s office. Because I want to live.
Five minutes later. PANICKED QUACKING. Mr. Duck. Separated from his two ladies.
I refused to help them. R.E.F.U.S.E.D.
I felt guilty. I decided I had to help them. Doctor’s appointment, schmocter’s appointment.
Then the girls found their way through the fence and straight back into Mr. Duck’s arms. On their own. I think they’re messing with me.
Doctor: “How did this happen?”
Me: “I was chasing my ducks around the goat pen and there’s this doghouse that’s falling apart–”
Doctor: “You were chasing dogs?”
Me: “No, ducks. It was just a doghouse. There was a donkey and a sheep and a bunch of chickens there, too, but they weren’t involved. Well, the goats weren’t really involved either. It was just their goat pen and their doghouse. But it was the ducks I was chasing. They were upset because they were separated.”
(long pause)
Doctor: “So how are you saying this happened again?”
Me: “I was saving a child from a fire.”
Posted by Suzanne McMinn | Permalink
