When
we moved to our small farm, I expected to learn
a few things. I
expected to figure out how an underground well works, how to sow a
garden, install and utilize an outside laundry line, stock a pond and
shoot a BB gun. I knew there would be pasture fence to repair, piles
of leaves to rake, and a lot of
lawn to cut. We spoke about the possibility of having a horse or a
goat out in our pasture, but ruled it out as an endeavor that was
simply too much for a family with three young children to manage.
Two years later, we have two horses out to pasture, twelve chickens
in the barn, one pregnant cat, and our two dogs Tyson and Copper. Oh,
and did I forget to mention the four ducklings that my husband begged
me for? Apparently Tractor Supply Co. did some pretty effective
marketing when he was there buying animal feed, and the tiny, yellow,
fluffy ducklings were too cute to pass up. The picturesque image of
our very own ducks paddling on our pond, eating Cheerios from our
children's outstretched hands was just too much for Brandon to
resist.
Ming-ming
was the first yellow duckling to join our family and warm our hearts.
His sister Daffodil, named by our little five-year-old daughter
Brooklynn, was next. Then came a tiny brown one that did not live to
see two consecutive days in our home, as our dog Copper decided that
a bird for breakfast sounded nice. We never got to name that one. The last duck we named Lucky since
he was the last duckling at Tractor Supply Co., stuck in a bin with a
bunch of baby chicks. My boys decided that it was “just not fair
for him to be stuck with all those chickens,” and so he came to be
the lucky duck to come home with us.
Some
might call our place a hobby farm. Except that we are not yet
sixty-something retirees with a bunch of time on our hands.
No, we are thirty-somethings trying to fit in baseball practices,
gymnastics, boy scouts and swim meets. (In between homework, dinner
and bedtime - mind you.) The kids all love their respective sports
and activities, not yet feeling overwhelmed, though their mother does
at times. They also love their animals. They love chasing them,
feeding them, naming them, carting them around in the wagon, and
generally loving on them. I am “the best mom in the world,” they
have informed me, simply because “Maggie's mom won't even let her
have a fish!” Sorry, Laura. No “Best Mom” award for all of
those tadpoles you raised on your front porch a couple of years ago.
They have already been forgotten.
So
even though we did not plan on having this menagerie of sorts, the
pleasure that each of us get from the various animals – all for
different reasons – makes it worth it. The chicken droppings
scattered throughout the lawn is tolerated due to it making excellent
fertilizer, but also because we get nutritionally excellent eggs
from the girls. The horses are entirely cared for by the young girl
who owns them, leaving us to simply enjoy watching them, petting them
and feeding them apples and sugar cubes from time to time. They
whinny when we drive in, come when we call them, and fertilize our
garden with their waste. We adore them.
The
small, sleek black cat that graces our home is one that we rescued
from under my mini-van on a brisk October afternoon. It was a tiny
little thing, sick with green eye boogies and an ear infection that
was so bad she could not walk without falling and rolling over. Of
course we took her home. We gave
her a bath, washed her eyes with saline for a week, and dropped our
favorite ear remedy Wally's Ear Oil in her ears to cure the suspected
ear infection. In one weeks' time she was as healthy as any kitten I
have ever laid eyes on. Her disposition has been nothing but sweet
and unassuming ever since, instantly earning the nickname Best Cat
Ever. Given that I am
not a cat person at all and
allergic to boot, she is a miracle pet. It turns out that I am only
minimally allergic to her, being able to hold her on my lap and
getting in return the loudest purring I've ever heard. Her name is
Miss Blacky and we will keep her forever.
One
small hitch in that equation occurred when our cat was just a
“teenager”. A large gray and white tom cat came prowling around
the farm. We responded by locking Miss Blacky in the garage at night,
and we kept her close to us during the day in the hopes of deterring
the boy cat. Remember, we were newbies with cats. We will never make
this mistake again, - she has since been spayed. But that was after
we accidentally locked her in the garage with the
boy cat, and found ourselves with a pregnant cat that for all intents
and purposes was still a baby herself.
Nine
weeks later, in addition to our perfectly wonderful Miss Blacky, we
now had four itty-bitty kitties named Nala, Summer, Squirtle, and
Little Blacky. Summer and Squirtle were taken to an acquaintance's
farm who happened to have a mouse problem, while Nala and Little
Blacky decided to stay with us. Nala has been renamed Grayson, by the
way. We discovered that he is in fact a boy
and a Lion's King reference to a girl lion was no longer appropriate.
So our little farm was clipping along with whinnies, barking, meowing
and clucks. When Brandon's little wifey gave in and agreed to the
ducklings, we also had some quacking. The ducklings spent the first
week in our house in a large Rubbermaid bin, the weather outside
being too cool for their tiny little bodies. The chicken feed dishes
doubled as duck feed dishes and the smell in our living room was
atrocious. Ducks are filthy birds, sleeping where they poop, eating
where they poop, and also just plain pooping a whole bunch. They eat
and poop it out about twenty minutes later, I think. Or at least it
appeared that way.
The second week we moved the Rubbermaid out to the front yard. We
filled up a kiddie pool with water and daily introduced them to their
makeshift pond. This was when we discovered that Lucky wasn't so
lucky after all. He could not stay upright in the water, leaning
severely to the left when made to float. The resulting position of
his neck was awful to even look at, let alone to live with. Upon
inspection of him more closely, we found a neurological problem with
one of his feet and a laxity in the knee on that side as well. To put
it plainly, one of Lucky's webbed feet curled in and couldn't keep
him upright in the water. So we tipped the pool a bit to allow for a
more shallow area for him to play in, and we continued to love him.
Soon thereafter Daffodil was caught by one of the dogs. Innocently
enough, she wandered into the backyard for a look around and was
quickly “herded” and shook. This was the beginning of what I now
refer to as Duck Hell.
I know that earlier it may seem that I made light of the first little
brown duck being eaten by Copper on day one of our duck adventure. It
was no small matter, however. Trying to explain to the children where
the duck went, hunting in the backyard for the remains (which we
never did find) was a deeply difficult thing for me. Up until living
on the farm, I had had very few experiences with the loss of a pet.
Our dog Oakley had been hit by a car five years prior and it took me
almost two years to come to terms with the loss. Before that I had
had a hamster that drowned in a sump pump when I was ten years old.
That was the extent of my experience with the cruelties of mother
nature. Not exactly a “seasoned” farmer. The circle of life that
I had sung about with my daughter during the Lion King movie had
never really felt like anything other than a movie to me. I was
having to play a fast game of catch up now, however.
Daffodil
was Brooklynn's duck, so I had to call Brooklynn out to the yard in
order to carry her still warm
dead duck to the backyard to bury it. If there had been a way of
replacing the duck without her knowing, we would have done it. But
Lucky had been the last one at the store, as you recall. So
Brooklynn learned a hard lesson that day about loving and losing. She
once had an earthworm that died in a Dixie cup she was carrying
around. It was a traumatic event for her. You can imagine how burying
Daffodil went.
But life moves on and we still had two ducks to care for. And care
for them we did. There have never been two ducks more nurtured than
Ming-ming and Lucky. We took them for strolls – or waddles –
through the yard, we even introduced them to Tyson, our ailing but
amazingly gentle Boxer-mix dog. I have a photograph of Ming-ming nose
to nose with Tyson, both just looking at each other, somewhat
indifferently. It is a favorite of mine.
The time came when the ducks were too large for the Rubbermaid
container and kiddie pool, so we hauled them out to the pond in the
extra-large dog kennel we found in the garage. Locking them up at
night, while allowing them the freedom to swim and explore during the
day seemed to be the next logical step for responsible duck
ownership. A hitch in the plan surfaced, however, when we discover
that the ducks could squeeze through the lower kennel rungs and
escape. So the covered dog house was brought out for them, placed
next to the pond for easy access in and out of the water and the
realization that nature would have to take its course at this point
was followed by a quick prayer to God to watch over our ducks. Mama
could not take another cruel circle of life event.
But circle it did.
It turns out that a Jurassic Park-size snapping turtle lives in our
pond. With spines on its shell like a stegosaurus and a neck as thick
as a softball, that damn turtle hunted our ducks. Poor Lucky didn't
stand a chance.
That was it. Cue the tears. Up until losing Lucky I had done a pretty
amazing job of being strong in the face of all of the death and
destruction that we had witnessed on our farm. Hawks circling
overhead, hunting my chickens day and night, leaving carcasses spread
wide open as if they had had a two hour feast took me some time to
get used to. It bothered me that the hawks only plucked out the lungs
and eyes but left the meaty breasts and thighs for the bugs to
devour. I couldn't help but think it was such a waste.
One of my chickens gave our dog Copper a run for his money earlier
that year. Feathers were scattered all over our pool deck, and Copper
was exhausted from the chase. Ultimately though, you can imagine who
won. With each consecutive chicken caught, I became more resilient to
losing them. Fewer, if any, tears fell. Burials became quicker, and
newly purchased chickens were never allowed to be named by the
children.
This
duck thing was different though. Ducklings were pretty needy babies.
I had spent weeks feeding
them, swimming them, and cleaning up after them. Ducklings are
preciously cute too. They had come to know us so well that they would
follow us around the yard. They trusted us, and would eat the bits of
food that we threw out for them. They would swim in the pond near to
where we were sitting. None of that helped when we would lose one of
them.
A decision was made. When Brandon was at work, I packed up the last
duck in a cat carrier and the kids and I took Ming-ming to a public
park in town. I had seen another pure white Peking duck there a few
weeks prior and thought maybe it would accept Ming-ming into its
flock. So straight out of a story like Charlotte's Web it seems, my
kids had to say their goodbyes. I told them we would come and visit
Ming-ming, to check on him. I told them he would have a friend. We
lifted him out of the carrier and placed him near the water's edge,
only twenty feet or so from another group of ducks. When we turned to
leave, tears streaming down my children's faces, Ming-ming quacked in
a very disconcerting way and tried to follow us. We had to run to
escape his attempt to join us. It was a terribly sad afternoon.
We
did see Ming-ming again, on several occasions. We saw him swimming
around with the other Peking duck for awhile. Then we only saw one
large white duck and decided it was him. Of course it was
him. We could not afford to
think otherwise.
We will never again have ducks. Although the realities of life and
death are powerful things for children to learn, there was nothing
powerful about our experience that spring. In fact, if it had gone on
much longer, I'd be concerned that the kids would become desensitized
to death. There is nothing to be gained from that.
----------------------
It is now full spring in 2012, a full year since having lost little
Lucky and the other ducks. A few more changes have taken place on the
farm. After we lost our lovely dog Tyson to what we think was cancer
in his belly, we eventually warmed up to having a new pup. Her name
is Savannah, she is a beautiful Labrador Retriever with hazel-colored
eyes, now five months old. She is brilliantly smart, endlessly
mischievous and a warm snuggle each morning as she begs me to wake
up already. We also now have three horses on our pasture
since Daisy Girl has joined our farm family. She is my very own
horse, a stunning Palomino Tennessee Walker and I joke about how she
is my mid-life crisis purchase. No big screen TV for me, thanks.
The chickens are gone, our pup had a taste for their “fertilizer”
which was something we simply could not get used to. We do miss the
free range eggs however and plan to build a new enclosure where my
son Tristan hopes to invest in a small flock and sell the eggs. I
will probably have to fight his innate desire to name the hens, his
heart is always wide open when we invite new animals in.
My daughter currently has five frogs out on the porch, all with names
of course. All rescued from our salt water swimming pool. She also
has a tiny turtle the size of a quarter. He is a baby snapping
turtle, caught in our pond, and is named Quicky. In all likelihood he
is probably offspring from The Duck Eater, but we pretend to not
think about that too much. He'll be released across town when the
time comes.
In conclusion, we Hellenbrands love our animals. We greatly
appreciate their company and the kids are learning the
responsibilities of caring for them. Powerful stuff.
Other than the occasional mallard or goose that stops by for a quick
dip, our pond is only home to blue gill, large mouth bass, a couple
carp and probably one really fertile, ancient turtle. It is better
that way. As cute as the ducklings were, as fun as it was to watch
them grow, there will be no more ducks for us. There are at least
five Peking ducks now residing at the lake across town. When we visit
the children's park there, we watch them with fond memories.
Ming-ming still lives on. Just in case though, on the off chance that
my lovely husband should walk past a cute display of small water
fowl, he is no longer allowed back into Tractor Supply Co. I now take
care of that errand, happily.
