Now, I feel I MUST declare that this story is 100% true.
It is also one of the most extraordinarily coincidental things that has ever happened to me (another reason why I think the stars are conspiring against me right now).
Just yesterday, I was discussing with a friend the idea that a person could come up with a different story every day of his/her life.
To this I responded, “Sure they
could, but the stories would mostly suck and who would want to read them.
That’s the trick.
I could write a description of what my cats are doing or about the way the female duck in our yard always gets gang-raped, but who would really want to read it?”
Then, this morning, a story about our female duck (we named her Daisy because she used to have two male ducks and a goose always following her around—the ducks I named Nick and Jay and the goose I named Tom after the characters in The Great Gatsby) being gang raped actually HAPPENED to me, and I think that people might actually have some interest in reading this one (though nothing interesting has happened with my cats yet, the day isn’t over, so I will be watching them with a wary eye).
So we have this little pack of ducks—the goose has apparently disbanded from the group, probably over creative differences—that frequents our yard. Usually they are just lounging around in the shade, waiting for one of us to open the back door. As soon as they spot us, they waddle up to the house, expecting it to rain bread chunks from the heavens, chirping with expectant “duck, duck, duck” sounds (“quack” is hardly what they are saying. I don't think they can say the "kw" sound anyway--they don't have the tools. And what does “quack” mean, anyway? Nothing, thus “duck” makes more sense). These ducks have been making appearances off and on through the years ever since we moved here three and a half years ago. And every Spring, mating season, we get to enjoy the sounds of duck love—which goes something like “DUCK! DUCK! DUCK!”—flap, flap, flap—“DUCK! DUCK! MMPH!” (imagine our astonishment at realizing that ducks could make an “MMPH!” noise, even without the vocal tools to make a "m" sound). We look out the window and, sure enough, there is Daisy with a posse of five or six ducks surrounding her, watching as another duck pins her to the ground and does his business.
Two of these ducks are always Nick and Jay. They invariably hang way back, shuffling their little webbed feet and acting like they have no clue what is going on—perhaps discussing the prospects of us coming out with a handful of bread slices to warm their bellies. I’m guessing that nobody has ever accused them of being Alpha Males. Where the other ducks come from I have no idea. There are several dozen small clans of ducks that hang together (we had another, rival gang that kept starting turf wars with Daisy and her crew. They were a tough, no nonsense group of ruffians and they had their own goose, who we named Guido, because he acted very much like a Guido. This clan we haven’t seen for two years now, though). Probably the other ducks like to broaden their mating horizons and strike out to find an unwilling partner or two. I’m not afraid to admit that I have no idea how the duck mind works. In fact, I find ducks just a little unnerving, like horses. They always seem to have a half-crazy look in their eyes.
Anyway, for some reason, the place they prefer to bring Daisy for action is in our backyard. I’ve never seen her assaulted on anyone else’s property, just ours. Perhaps they like the privacy that our tree rows offer.
Actually, after what happened to me this morning, I think it just might be privacy that these ducks want and expect.
As I was out push mowing our yard, which is far too large to push mow, the pack of ducks came flying awkwardly into the back half of the yard. They were flying awkwardly because three males were simultaneously attempting a mid-air mounting maneuver that even the horniest of falcons would be loath to attempt. Or maybe it’s eagles. Whichever larger, more graceful bird it is that likes to copulate while plummeting toward the ground at harrowing speeds. I’m just SURE that happens. I feel certain that I saw this on some nature program or other—sex being a favorite topic even on nature programs as it is with nearly all aspects of human-focused programming. Whatever aviary nookiers they were like, these ducks were putting them to shame, let’s just leave it at that. The mini-flock landed in the freshly mowed grass about ten yards away from me and proceeded to further “woo” our fair Daisy, attempting to grab the back of her neck with their beaks while hopping unceremoniously on her back. Very romantic, ducks.
The sound of the mower and my proximity seemed, at first, to be of little concern to them, such were they focused on the task at hand. Nonetheless, I felt it only polite to shut the mower off and move it out of what I perceived to be their harm’s way. If the males performed in their typical fashion, the show would be over in less than five seconds and then I could get back to my work. Far be it from me to disrupt nature in all of its glory.
I let the safety handle on the mower go, which kills the engine. And as soon as I did, the ducks all turned and noticed me. Daisy made a break for it while the males were distracted, heading straight for me, though she looked to be in no real hurry. Because it makes for good story development, I would like to say that she had some sort of imploring look in her eye, as if she were asking me to protect her like the Alpha Male she so richly deserved, but, quite probably, she only thought it was feeding time. At least, the nonchalant way she approached suggested as much.
The group of males, their attention already turned my way, saw Daisy making a break for it. A few of them dutifully followed her, still attempting boarding procedures, but two of them had focused their attention entirely on me. They stormed my direction (and if you’ve never seen a duck "storm," pray you never do), wings flapping and raising a horrendous ruckus of “DUCK! DUCK! DUCK!” The other two males who were following Daisy, catching the fever of rage off the other two ducks, also turned their attention to me and began to advance in a decidedly threatening manner.
Off to the side, Nick and Jay shifted their weight from one foot to the other and pecked at a few leaves on the ground in front of them, trying to look too caught up in their own affairs to notice what was going on with me.
Now, I’m a farm boy. I grew up around very large beasts who could, and would, crush me if given the chance to do so—probably not on purpose, mind you, since they were also incredibly stupid and mostly docile beasts, but the facts still remain. And I’ve dealt with my share of animal aggression over the years. Possums, snakes, skunks, feral cats and even the occasional bobcat or coyote (though usually these were only seen from the safety of a car) hold no real power over me when they approach with blood in their eyes. I know that I’m bigger, stronger and have the ability to utilize various tools in my own defense. I am a civilized person, in the literal meaning of the phrase, and I know that my opposing thumbs will help me defeat any lesser life form that happens to get all up in my grill.
But ducks are different. Birds in general are probably different—except, possibly, the puffin. Mammals I can deal with—non-flight-worthy mammals, anyway, bats fall into the “birds” or “large insects” category as far as I’m concerned. They may be fast, but gravity works against them and I know they will always be coming from a generally downward direction when they lunge at me. Birds can come from anywhere and everywhere. They can flap themselves just out of my reach and make a stab for my eyes when my arms in just the wrong place. I’ve seen the movies, I know it happens.
So, against all rationale, I very nearly panicked. In retrospect, this seems ridiculous and possibly a bit girlish. I mean, they WERE just ducks. What can a duck do? They can't even say "quack" properly. And it was exactly this question that was pulling painful and disfiguring possibilities from the nether reaches of my mind. What COULDN’T a duck do (besides the obvious speech impediment)?
Now, before anyone gets the wrong idea, I didn’t start flailing my arms, shrieking like a school girl and fleeing in holy terror to the safety of the house, at least not on the surface. As far as the ducks could see, I remained calm, turned (“Oh lord! They could grab me by the back of the neck and start jumping on MY back,” I thought) and walked casually back to the house. Seeing that I was no longer a threat—whatever threat I might have been in their eyes—they re-focused their attention on Daisy, who dejectedly succumbed to their whims without any further struggle. I think this was due to the fact that I didn’t have any bread to offer her. She just lost the will to continue her resistance.
So there I learned a valuable lesson about both myself and ducks in general. First, I’m a wuss, it seems, at least where birds are concerned. Second, ducks are killers. I saw it in their beady little eyes. I’ll never trust a duck again as long as I live.
(What follows is the second part of this story, which was non-duck-related. I will, however, include it anyway, because it is appropriately self-depricating.)
The second story happened to me less than an hour later and, again, needs a little setting up so everyone understands the circumstances.
Come July 24th, I will be officially old. This is a distinction from which there is no returning. And, as many people do when they come to the realization that they aren’t twenty years old anymore, I’ve spent varying amounts of time and energy over the course of the last four months trying to get myself back into some semblance of shape. Most of what I had been doing prior to this period involved the power of positive thinking—if I truly believed that I was as healthy, young, energetic and, above all, fit as I was when I graduated from high school, then all of these things would come to pass. Sadly, and despite everything the alternative medicine professionals would have you believe, the body simply does not respond solely to positive energy flow. This unfortunate truth finally sunk in around the first of the year, so I became moderately more active.
Currently my workout regime consists mostly of a concentrated effort on my part to leave my remote control on the other side of the room—thus requiring me to rise from my chair every time that I want to change the channel and getting me about ten feet of living room breeze sprints (the little brother of the wind sprint that many of us who went out for organized sports had to endure). I also decided that it was about time that I broke out the bike that Libby bought me for Christmas five years ago (and which had seen a sum total of around five hours of butt wear on the seat in that time, many of which Skye put on it when she and Ben came out last fall). So, for the last two months—since it has been warm enough—I have been taking nearly daily bike rides up to Athletic Park, which runs adjacent to the bike path that runs nearly adjacent to our property. There is a rather large road that circles the Park and is probably about ¾ of a mile long (I could give you an exact circumference, but I forget the value of pi, sorry). I mean, it was just SO handy—a bike path in my backyard that runs to a park with an infrequently populated road. There didn’t seem to be any logical excuse that I could come up with not to “take the exercise.”
The problem is, I have a notoriously short attention span. I mean, sure, I can stare at the same monitor/screen for countless hours on end, hardly moving or exhibiting outward signs of life—or even intelligence. But then there are many flashing pixels of light forcing my brain to constantly readjust. On a bike there is pretty much a throbbing in one’s ass and a strong desire to be sitting in front of a monitor/screen being driven dribbly by the lights, and that is about it to help pass the time.
Being the problem solver that I am, though, I decided to start entertaining myself. I began to sing while I rode my bike around the park.
Currently, I have only a half dozen songs completely memorized from start to finish. Early on I found that, if I paced my songs to coincide with where I was on the road around the park, I could finish the last song right about the time that I needed to be heading back, because I was desperately close to passing out.
This week was finals week for all of my classes—which, for those of you with real jobs, means I have to endure a nearly rigorous three week interval of complete inactivity before summer classes begin again (you may think you’re jealous at this point, but you just try and spend that much time watching daytime television and you’ll understand just how much of a purgatory this truly is. Trust me, you’re better off where you are). So, with roughly twelve inches of essays, revisions and journal entries piled up on our dining room table waiting for me to grade, I decided that daily bike rides would not only offer me the opportunity to step away from my work for forty-five minutes or an hour, supposedly to return refreshed and ready to face more horrible writing (but, in actuality, leaving me sweaty and not at all interested in spending more time sitting down), it would also get me into a much needed routine that I could carry through the next three weeks of break--the goal being to whip me back into a mere shadow of the fitness that I had as a youth.
One other point of context. Last weekend Newton held the Kansas Sampler Festival. A sort of hippy revival of homespun crap and local business bent on bilking sucker consumers out of whatever cash flow they had previously left untapped. Libby bought two ceramic pumpkins. This week, City of Newton employees have been diligently tearing down all of the tents, road blocks, plastic fencing, etc. from the event.
And, so, there I was early in the week. Pumping my little legs as fast as I could around the park’s perimeter—singing my songs and trying hard not to just give up.
Those of you who have heard me sing will doubtless tell me that I have a wonderful singing voice. This is very polite of you and I know that this is, for the most part, just not the case. And, since I know this, I always lower my voice to a harmonic mutter whenever I am passing people on the road or making use of the park. But, this week, there were an unusually high number of people working in, it turns out, concealed portions of the park.
Thus it became apparent to me this afternoon, when I noticed one of the City of Newton workers pointing me out to one of his co-workers as I rode past, that I had not done such a good job of muttering while passing other people earlier in the week. I believe I noticed them chuckling over it.
And there’s the story. But, in this case, it’s not so much what actually happened that is interesting as the prospects such a circumstance created in my imagination.
I imagined this city employee telling others about me, possibly to let them in on the joke so they could keep an eye out for me in the future (there are always a few city workers around the park every day, lord knows what they are doing). Possibly the legend would grow. Before too long, I would have a local notoriety equivalent to both of Newton’s local-color celebrities: our own Superhero, the Puma, and The Lawnmower Man (a gentleman who looks more than a little like a truncated version of Bluto from Popeye who pushes his lawnmower all around town throughout the summer).
And as the legend grew, word would eventually make it to the paper, The Newton Kansan. And some industrious, and bored, journalist would see a potential human interest story. So they would start gathering information about me, and an article would be written.
I would be given some catchy yet unimaginative newspaper-type nickname, like The Singing Cyclist or maybe the Peddling Vocalist—considering our journalists are small town quality and they may have no love for alliteration, or even attempting anything near catchiness. Or, if they wanted to base my nickname on one of the songs that I know by heart and sing, they would call me The Gambler (lord, I know, I’m embarrassed for having that song as part of my limited repertoire, but I’ve known the stupid song since I was in grade school for some reason and it refuses to leave, and I needed at least a half a dozen songs so I would stay out there long enough).
But, then, as I considered this further, I imagined people actually trying to prove that I was, in fact, singing while I rode my bike around the park, which meant that people would be coming out to actually track me down and hear me. In which case, once they finally did, there would be little chance that my nickname would reflect anything positive, considering the quality of my vocals as I trudged around the park. Probably they would dub me The Winded Wailer or something equally horrible. I would be ridiculed by the world of Newton and forced to retreat into hiding. I could no longer teach classes in this town because none of my students would ever take me seriously.
And, so, as I thought these thoughts and finished off my rendition of “In the Still of the Night,” I pledged myself to a vow of musical silence—or near silence—while riding my bike. Unless I can ever remember the entire theme song to the TV show Small Wonder. I can’t think of anything bad that might happen if the world hears me singing that song.
No comments:
Post a Comment