Sept. 26, 2001 ~ Duckless in Texas
This morning our neighbor brought his little dozer over to do some work on our small pond's dam. He and Larry had only been down there a couple of minutes when I joined them. Scanning the pond's surface, I saw no familiar babies.
"Where are our ducks?" I asked.
"Gone."
He waved his arm in the air to indicate that they'd flown away. Gone? Our ducks are gone?
"Where did they go?"
Big sigh. Long pause.
"I'm afraid they went next door. They circled over the lake next door and then I lost sight of them."
"LARRY! Could you PLEASE go over there and tell them to come home right this minute? Or tell our neighbor not to shoot them? Tell him those are tame ducks, and it's not fair to hunt them. It would be cheating. I have watched those ducks from when they were tiny babies, and I sure don't want to lose them this way."
Well. Of course he can't go get the ducks and bring them back, nor can he tell our neighbor not to shoot them if they are actually on his property. And who would be dumb enough to alert a hunter to the presence of the creature he loves to hunt? But I hate to see those babies go this way. In my mind, I'd imagined a crisp fall day in the not-too-distant future when a small flock of brown ducks stopped at our pond, and OUR brown ducks joined in with their own kind... flying gracefully away... far, FAR away.
I guess things don't always turn out as we plan. Big surprise, eh?
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