Ducks on the Pond
The pond is only eight acres. Despite the houses along its west side it remains fairly wild, and draws the wild creatures. The mallards fly in nearly every dawn, leaving at dusk for deeper, safer waters, but when the geese come from the Canadian cold they tend to stay for a while. The heron has claimed the pond for his own, and will fight any other heron that tries it for fish, the fishing being good... bass, perch, some giant carp stocked by my wife to help with the algie, among many, many others. Of a morning a doe sips from the misty bank. We watch her from our breakfast table, she being nervous with her speckled fawn, imaginary threats at every direction. Later, after the working day, and beside the patio fire, come the evening swallows, they silhouetted by blazing reds as they circle for mosquitos, dipping and diving through the dusk before giving way to the bats. Life is never easy, even for the blood-suckers.
All of this besides turtles, buffleheads, tree frogs, and the rare coyote. A pair of red-shouldered hawks nest in the Black Walnut on the eastern bank, while an owl hoot-a-hoo’s from the northern tree-line, ready to take up their raptor’s baton for an evening hunt. It is most entertaining, and we never tire of watching, my wife ever with camera at hand.
But our favorites are Kay’s Swedish Blues, a pair of domestic ducks purchased as a pair and dropped into the pond by my wife three or four years ago. Flightless ducks safe in a tiny pool surrounded by dangers. They have no nesting box, and I gave them little chance of survival when she first brought them home, but they have made friends with the mallards and the wood-ducks, and they swim together alongside the loons, and the buffleheads. The key word being together... always they are together.
On the days with no mallards the Swedish Blues fish together by the bank, four webbed feet and two duck butts bobbing on choppy waves. On days when the mallards come the pair join together in the play, or in the fight, together, or they laze together in the duck crowd, enjoying the walnut’s shade. When night comes and the wild ducks go, our pair finds the reedy bank, floating in the shallows there, always together, the one-legged heron standing guard nearby, three black shadows quiet in the moonlight, awaiting another day.
When Kay goes out with a bowl of corn the pair swim wildy for her from across the lake, sometimes lifting above the water on shaky wings, but it is not love driving them to her. It is only hunger driving them, animal instinct, and I wonder if theirs can even be love for each other? They are only ducks, after all. Yes, they are tied together with an invisible line, never to seperate. Yes, they need each other desperately, that is obvious. They are the only two of their kind in this micro-world. What more could either one want but for another to share the trials of life with? But, what will happen to one when the coyote gets the other, or age? The loneliness will be unfathonamable for the one left, and unbearable, but still it is not love. It is something. Surely it is something, but it cannot be love...