Another Day in the Country
Conversation with the ducks
© Another Day in the Country
It’s another day in the country, and I thought perhaps this was the day I finally could let the ducks out of their pen to take a bath in our small pond.
Alas, the pond still was consumed with a persistent ice floe covering most of its surface. Who knew it would take so long for this all to thaw?
The ducks were disappointed when I broke the news. They already sounded depressed.
Daffy was squeaking instead of quacking, which is not good. Truth be told, I’ve been sounding a bit like that myself this past week.
“You just need some water deep enough to lubricate your sinuses,” I tell her. “You’ll sound better soon.”
She already knows this and gives me a look that clearly says, “Duh!”
So, I continue filling up the ducks’ big water container outside, where they can get their necks way down in the liquidity and fish around on the bottom, as they love doing.
I hear them muttering a mantra over and over, as they wait:
Ice in the street.
Drifts in the yard.
Ice in the ponds.
The hose, it’s hard.
Being a duck
We’re clean out of luck.
No swimming today.
I think it could be a Broadway musical — at least, that’s how it sounds in my head as I write this.
I opened the big door to the duck house to let sunshine in.
They’ve finally stopped laying. Have I already told you that? It was such a relief at first, but now with the price of eggs in Kansas at $12 a dozen, I imagine an abundance of duck eggs could be good again..
The girls over at the hen house are still on sabbatical. I’d better give them more light so they can adjust themselves to laying eggs again. It will take a few weeks, and I’m running out of eggs. I’ll have to check the storage fridge over at Ramona House.
I had to laugh when I was in California, and we went scrambling for eggs (pun intended) because my grandson’s chickens (all four of them) had stopped laying, too.
We went hunting in the back corners of the fridge, where my daughter assured me there had to be a few eggs. They had been there for a long time.
”How long?” I asked Jana.
“Not that long,” she said.
But some of those eggs were pullet eggs, and those hens have been big girls for some time.
The eggs still were good; the whites, slightly dehydrated — which is exactly how I’ve been feeling, stuck indoors for a month.
During icy weather, I’ve vowed to be careful. So, I’ve been mostly inside.
My mother, when she was quite a bit younger than I am now, trudged out in the snow to go to a mailbox at the end of their lane, slipped, and broke her leg, which drastically changed her life. By the time that leg healed, it was three inches shorter than the other one.
Maybe it’s superstition, but I’m careful around snow and ice.
All that caution probably amounts to nothing. After all, I could break anything tripping over a cat or a book on the floor — or just walking down a step on a warm spring day, as I did when I was 17 and broke my foot two months before my high school graduation.
I was so humiliated to be walking down the aisle with a walker cast on my leg that I thought I’d die — but I didn’t.
You can tell that the ducks have been penned in too long with this weather. They are snippy with each other — like siblings or a husband and wife who haven’t really resolved their differences.
Daffy comes to check and see just how full the water bowl now is.
“It’s taking quite a while,” she says to me, impatiently. “Can’t you make it go faster?”
“I think there’s still ice in the hose where it comes past the north side of the house,” I explain.
“Ever think of turning on the water pressure more? Clear it out?” she suggests. “Or wiggle the hose to break it up?”
“Quit being snippy,” I snap. “Just be glad I’m doing this. And here I am, doing this with my slippers on — my new red fussy slippers that I swore I would never wear outside to feed the ducks, even on a clear day, let alone when everything is muddy and melting.”
Daisy sneaks in for a sip of water from the big bowl. She savors it as if it’s her favorite tea.
She’s trying not to assert herself into our conversation. But then, Dutchess, usually low gal in the lineup, sees what Daisy is doing and snakes her beak over for a pinch on the shoulder, like, “Why is it your turn, Miss Uppity?”
Daisy backs off, then Drake starts in.
He never talks very loudly but he’s quite insistent now. It looks as if he’s trying to be a calming influence for a change, saying:
“C’mon girls, have a little patience. In a minute, Pat will have filled this to the top, just as you like it, and you can stick your head in up to your ears!
“Tomorrow is another warm day, and maybe by then we can go out for a swim. Be nice to each other.”
“Good idea!” I might add.