Ducks, Ducks and More Ducks:

All my life I’ve loved ducks. Who wouldn’t. They go around with a look of a smile etched on their beaks. Back in North Woburn before we had paper routes and an otherwise busy life, my mother bought Jerry and I a pair of Pekin ducks. When we showed Mom we could care for these, she had the meadow and part of the brook below our house fenced in. She then bought several Muscovy ducklings. I don’t think she explained the economics of duck raising too well, as the idea of selling them for meat was something neither of us even considered. To us they were just neat pets and Jerry named every one… even when the flock grew past a count of twenty.

Fencing in the Muscovy ducks would only work if they couldn’t fly. As much as my mother hated doing so, she sheared back their wing feathers once they developed so they couldn’t jump fence and fly away. The permanent way to do that is to take off the last joint… if you’ve had any roast fowl, you know that last joint is an almost meatless bone when it comes to eating a bird. But it is necessary to flying. Mom couldn’t bear to permanently injure the ducks, so in a matter of time, their wing feathers would grow back enough so they could get over the fence. Then with what took almost an hour, though it seemed the better part of a day, the troupe then would come through the meadow, marching up past the garden, past the back of the fenced in backyard, and then at an angle towards the far side of the barn, up the sand bank to the top of the hill where they would take a test flight. If they couldn’t really get off the ground enough to fly over the barn, they’d thy again another day repeating the daily trek until they all flew beautifully. Mom never clipped their wings again. The ducks weren’t about to leave… they had a good home, enjoyed the brook, and got in the habit of the daily trek to enjoying their flying high with a splash-in-the-brook landing within their yard. Jerry tried flooding the meadow by building a dam to block the waters flow, trying to make our brook into a pond. I had visions of having a lake in our meadow, but the meadow didn‘t have a low enough area to harbor the waters new level, so we widened the brook somewhat.

Finally having about 30 ducks, and Thanksgiving right around the corner, Mom couldn’t see why we couldn’t have a few “small turkeys” otherwise known as two Muscovy ducks done up the same way as one would stuff and roast a turkey. I think one of my older brothers killed the ducks for Mom, as I couldn’t see her actually wielding the ax. I guess Mom was being more practical than thoughtful, as we didn’t think how Jerry would feel about this. I think she hoped he’d just think they were small half grown turkeys. Mom told me about it, but didn’t break it to Jerry until after he found out himself: *Jerry thought they were short legged chickens. After we ate, he went out and counted the ducks, finding that two were missing. He said they were the most tame ones… Ones that let you walk up and hug them. He got so sick he regurgitated his meal, and collapsed in the meadow from the shock that he had just eaten his best and usually only friends. He went in and yelled, calling our whole family murderers. He collected the leftovers and buried them in the front yard and put crosses on the graves with the two names in the crosses, “Grey Lady” and “William Penn.” He never forgave Mom, nor trusted any of us for having kept this deception from him.

*The facts of this part was extracted from my brother’s memoir of his childhood [ a project in which he typed up his memories, complete with photocopies of old black & white pictures, for Mom when she was in a nursing home for the last few years of her life. He made a copy for the rest of the family from which I extracted emotional backlash over the Thanksgiving Day in which he had nothing to be thankful for.

I think my mother felt the same way I feel about fowl, in that we din’t put them on the same level as house pets, like cats and dogs. Later I was to raise chickens for their meat, though I can’t find it in myself to do the butchering myself. But at times they have provided me good company. Back when I was nine or ten years old, we had a hurricane that knocked out the electricity for about a month. My mother had to get dry ice to keep the food in the freezer from defrosting. Howard Johnson had great sales on their ice cream while it lasted. And one night the rest of the family was gone while I stayed home… forget the reason, but in the black of the night, I lit all the candles I could find, and got some cards out so I could play solitaire but still felt I needed more, and some company from the ducks helped. It was three Pekin ducks we had at the time, and I put plenty of papers on the chairs in the dining room next to where I was going to play cards at the table, and went out and carried the ducks in to sit with me until my family returned. My mother said it made a pretty picture, when they came around the corner of the court where they could see framed in the front window, the candles, the girl with long pigtails playing cards with three white ducks that were attentively watching as if waiting their turn at cards.