When You Love a Duck
It all started with my reading Eliot Coleman’s Four Season Gardener. Twenty years ago, Anne-Marie and I had purchased a house that had enough land for me to build a shop and to also have the organic vegetable garden I had always dreamed of. I had been gardening in community gardens for a few years and knew that keeping garden pests at bay was partly learned through books, experience, and a bit of luck. One of the chapters in Coleman’s book was about pest control and how he used ducks to help with this in his gardens.
In late winter of 2000, I saw a sign at the local feed store about ordering ducks. They were selling Mallards, Peking, and Cayugas. I ordered a mix of 15, both white Pekings and black Cayugas. While waiting for spring when the ducks would arrive, I figured how much space they would need and built a large outdoor pen that was attached to a small shed for overnight shelter. I read everything I could find about caring for ducks, including all about the predators that could get them! Because of this realization, I was determined not to let anything happen to them. Surrounded by 30 acres of woods, this meant they would need to be a bit chaperoned when free in the yard.
When I picked up the ducklings, I was electric with excitement. Everyone knows that baby animals are cute, but baby ducks? They were beyond cute, and at that point, I was smitten! Here began the large learning curve of having these precious creatures in our lives, with all the joy, laughter, and tears that would come with caring for these wonderful outdoor companions.
It has now been 20 years since that first spring, and one can imagine that there are many stories, each deserving to be told. But this story, the story of Supie, is about the duck who stole my heart by imbuing me with a motherly love as if I had birthed her myself.
It was the beginning of May 2002, and I was in the basement doing laundry. Suddenly I heard a sound that was different, like something very small scurrying about. And like many basements, ours doubled as a storage area with possessions stacked all around. I kept looking, following the sound, and finally spotted a very tiny brown duck. Its markings led me to believe that it was either a Wood Duck or a Mallard. She was very difficult to catch, but with persistence, I managed. At this point, the duckling was exhausted and very weak, so weak that its little head was flopping from side to side.
I scratched my head, trying to figure out how it got into the basement in the first place. The only way in was through the dryer vent. Could she have escaped a predator by being dropped and somehow made it to the dryer vent where it was warm? There was a pond in the back woods that ducks would visit, and I wondered if she came from there. She certainly was not hatched from any of my ducks, as we collected their eggs daily.
I called a bird rehabilitation facility, and they told me that if it was a Wood Duck, it would most likely not survive, but if it was a Mallard, there was a possibility. They recommended some things I could do, and I began feeding her with a syringe. After a day, she started to perk up and was doing better. I had raised my other ducklings with lights and proper food, so I kept that up until she could safely be with the other older ducks. The rehab facility said that when she was ready and able, she would fly off and make her way back to the wild.
We named her Supie, Ghanaian for “friend”. Anne-Marie had just spent some time there studying African drumming and made many Ghanaian friends, so it seemed fitting. After maturing and once feathers replaced fluff, she stayed close to another female duck named Little Girl. They began spending lots of time together, snarfling (our word for the act of brushing the ground swiftly from side to side with their bills), eating dandelions, grass, and of course, bugs and especially slugs.
Domestic ducks have their ability to fly bred right out of them. Their agricultural use of meat and eggs is what people are after. Flying any distance is something they just cannot do, and because of this, they have very little defense against predators, even less than chickens. Their bills, rounded and blunt, are hardly a weapon. The sad truth of raising domestic birds is the standard practice of clipping their wings so they cannot explore this inherent pleasure and necessity. We did not follow suit with Supie. She would take flight in the yard often, and we knew that it was only a matter of time before we would have to say goodbye.
Fall came, and the Canada geese started vocalizing overhead as other birds also began their migration. One day, Supie flew out of the shed as soon as I opened the door. I had to duck so that she could get by and not slam into me. She continued to fly, circling higher and higher above the yard, quacking as she went. She got smaller and smaller, her quack a bit fainter, as if to say to her duck friends below, “It’s time. Aren’t you coming?”. They quacked back, and after a while, she landed back down, feathers a little ruffled, and joined the others in snarfling. That was that! It appeared that she had decided that home was right here on Oakledge Road, and we would not have to say goodbye. Or at least, not now.
As fall turned into winter and for many years after, Supie’s wildness was something that we had to learn to adapt to. Occasionally in spring, the male ducks would try to mate with her, but unsuccessfully, since her body was very small. Wild female mallards are much smaller than those raised by breeders, and the mating gesture, which in male ducks is quite hysterical and cannot adequately be described, would spark her motherly instincts. She would go missing, not to be found when it was time to close in the rest of the flock for the night. This pushed my own motherly instincts to worry, and I would try to call and find her until it was time for me to go to bed. After a few years of this repeated ritual, we discovered that she was making nests in the woods not far from our yard and closer to where she probably was born. No chicks ever came of it.
One night, when she did not come home, and while I was fast asleep, I awoke to the sound of a duck quacking, flying outside our bedroom window! How did she know where we were? I grabbed a flashlight and immediately ran outside. I found her, a bit ruffled, but ready to be escorted to the duck house for the remainder of the night. It did not stop her from her seasonal ritual of nesting, so the worry continued.
She was a precious creature with a big personality, and I always felt the gift of having her share in our life with the rest of the flock. Unlike the other ducks who were good in the garden once the plants were bigger, Supie’s small size gave her a pass in when the others were barricaded out. Her slug appetite was superb, and we spent many hours gardening together. She was always close by, waiting for her special earthworm treat that would get tossed to her. She would stand there waiting, allowing me to do the snarfling for her.
When Supie was about 11, she decided this earthly world was enough and gently slipped away. It was a hard passing for me, saying goodbye to my garden companion who chose to be part of our home and family. Her name, “friend”, was so perfect, and she truly was more than that in so many ways. But being of mallard mind, I can still sometimes hear her in the back woods or see her swimming in the pond. We humans are lucky to be trusted and befriended by the wild. It is a huge gift that Nature rarely allows. And when I am tired of my earthly body, I hope to feel what it is like to fly and maybe, just maybe, spot her flying with me.