A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Ignorance or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Duck.

Get the tissues ready, because this is going to be a sad one. Not sad in the sense that it really sucks (I hope) but sad in the sense of bawling uncontrollably and digging your way through half a carton of cookie dough ice cream. So get that Prozac prescription ready, 'cause here we go...

...and here we stop. First, I think some background might be necessary. I used to live in the beautiful (heh) town of Rocky Mountain House, renting a place with a congenial couple and their demonic kids. However, Rocky is an oil town, and since there's a ton of workers each earning an ungodly amount of money, rent is at the stratospheric level. It's definitely too high for a counter monkey such as myself to pay half the rent on a house, which was my arrangement at the time. So, I moved half an hour out of town to live in my mother's trailer. All bills were paid for; the only thing to consider was spending a lot more on gas. Until my car died necessitating me buying a new one, but that's a whole other story. Anyway, my mother is quite the animal nut. When I moved in there were five cats and an old dog named Ben (Extraneous detail: Ben is currently lying beside my chair at work. The boss is very liberal about animals in the store. Clean freaks and hypochondriacs can go to hell, because I'm not going to stop bringing him with me.) A new cat came shortly after, who I quickly adopted as my own and affectionately dubbed Squeaker. Now, you may be thinking that owning six cats and a dog is going far beyond the rational limit of pet ownership, and you would be right. Just try telling my mother that. The next couple of months saw the addition of three rabbits (Babbit, Swee' Pea and Flopsy) two chickens (Esther and Flo), and a fish (Bruce) to our menagerie. This, although rather strange, was manageable. The rabbits were cute (except when horny, which is ALL THE FRICKIN' TIME), the chickens laid eggs thereby serving a useful purpose, and if you can't ignore a fish then you have serious problems. But I have yet to talk about THEM; the vicious bastard Hell beasts plucked from the traitorous bosom of Satan himself. I'm talking about DUCKS. From what you've seen in various forms of media you would get the idea that ducks are cute and cuddly bundles of sweetness and joy. That is very, extremely, almost impossibly wrong. Ducks are raging assholes who seem to be capable only of incessant quacking and shitting. (Insert joke about some political figure here.) The drake in particular was a gigantic pain in the ass. Ten minutes after the chickens moved in he was screaming and smacking them around. He'd chase the cats and bowl them over, and one time I even caught him ramming into Ben. He loved the rabbits, though, even when they'd attempt to "love" him in return. We also had a female, but I never had any problems with her, besides the fact she was a duck. Well, there was the one time my mother came running in the door screaming, "Come quick and look! The ducks are having sex!" Ummm... right. Now that I've established some of the history, let's move on to the actual story, shall we?

The time? This past weekend. The place? Our trailer. My mother had gone away for a GMC seminar (a.k.a. getting drunk with car salesmen), and thus it was my duty to take care of our various critters. I came home rather late on Friday night and was surprised to see that there were no waterfowl on the front lawn. Usually they're out and about to harass me on the way to the door, but they were nowhere to be seen. I chalked it up to a tiring day of quacking and shitting, and went inside to go to sleep. Cue the next morning. I was woken up by a frenzied quack coming from underneath my bedroom window. By the time I made it there to see what the hell was going on, the perpetrator had waddled off. I went to the front door and saw the female duck going completely apeshit. She was running back and forth, flapping her wings and quacking herself to high heaven. Seeing as it was ten o' clock and the ducks are used to being fed at seven, I thought she was just hungry. I grabbed a carrot and sliced it up for her. It had no discernable effect on her demeanour, even though she'd gobble a slice between quacks. Then I realized I hadn't seen the drake yet. Usually, the two of them were inseperable. A frantic search around the property proved fruitless; he was gone. The female's quacks turned more and more anguished until she went to hide in her shed. With a sad sigh I hauled myself inside and got ready for work.

I arrived home late again on Saturday, and once more there were no ducks on the lawn. Not even the female. Instead of going inside right away, I figured I'd go on a little search for them. We rent a section on a farm, and since there are a couple of grain silos not far from the trailer I thought the best place to look would be there. I asked Ben if he'd like to come, but he decided to pass out in the middle of the driveway instead. Noofle, the most gregarious cat in the world, tagged along in his place. After making it down the hill (and carrying the poor confounded cat across the cattle guard) I couldn't see any activity at the silos. Further inspection revealed no ducks. Beaten, I began to trudge my way back. To my surprise Bailey, the fattest cat in the world, met us halfway. But a few minutes later he was already lagging pretty far behind. So, not wanting to see the poor bastard suffer a heart attack, I scooped him up in my arms and carried him the rest of the way. Points for effort, Bailey; points for effort. Noofle decided he wasn't going to be outdone, so he leapt up onto my shoulder and perched there like a bloody parrot. Just call me Dr. Fucking Doolittle.

Sunday morning was a let down as well. I couldn't see either of the ducks out and about. However, I decided I'd give it one last try before I went to work. I finally managed to find the female hiding behind a box in the duck/chicken shed. She gave some weak quacks when she saw me, then buried her head in her chest. I almost wanted to cry. On the drive into town I thought to myself that I couldn't just leave her like that; I'd have to go back and make sure she was okay. I gave the boss a call when I got to work, explained the situation to him, and asked if he'd be willing to work for me. He said that normally he would have no problem doing so, but he had severely injured himself (it's true; and it's NASTY) and could barely stand, let alone operate a till for seven hours on end. It was a let down, but I thanked him anyway. It was time to give my mother a call and explain the situation. After doing so and getting back to the hell which is my job I received a phone call back around four hours later. It turns out she was just sitting on some eggs that we had no idea she had. All in all, it's very bittersweet; we've lost our drake to god knows what but we're going to get some ducklings out of it. I just hope that duck appreciates that I was going to sacrifice seven hours worth of wages for her.

And now it's Monday evening. Still no sign of the jackass. At this point in time it's best to give up hope that he's still alive. And you know what? I actually miss the cranky asshole. I miss the way he'd charge at my heels, until I gave him a look and he took off in the other direction. I miss the way our amorous rabbits would follow him everywhere and would try to mount his neck. I miss the way he had no balance when he'd try to swim in the little pool we gave them; he'd teeter from one side to the other. And strangely, the thing I miss most of all is the bizarre harmony of quacking those two would have when you got them going.

Whew, that was depressing. What have we learned so far? Besides the fact that I'm a big pussy, I mean.