Even remorselessly cheerful people get a bit grumpy when it rains and rains and rains. Especially when the roof leaks and all the Persian carpets start to smell strongly of old camels. Even the dogs smell like old camels. Your clothes and sheets are always a bit damp and jungles of mildew spring up in all kinds of surprising places.
For my first rainy season in Bali, I lived in a house in the rice fields. I quickly learned that this location offered a unique perspective on rising damp and more than the usual allotment of snakes and rats. Of course the roof leaked. I tried to be cheerful about all this but the challenge was too great. After three days of leaks and grumpiness I decided that since the universe had handed me a lemon, I might as well make lemonade. Ducks liked water, so I would have ducks.
Little did I realize I was inviting a soap opera of lust, attempted rape, homosexuality, polygamy and infanticide into my quiet life.
The next morning found me at the public market at 0630. “Too late,” my driver said gloomily as we vied for a parking spot. At this slothful hour, all the good ducks had already been taken; no babies were left. “That’s OK. Many babies die, you get depress,” comforted Made. “Bigger better.” We had our choice of adolescents which were being peddled out of big round wicker baskets from the back of pick-up trucks. The smell was… interesting.
Every time we paused to assess a flock, the ducks would stampede to the opposite side of their basket and gabble in alarm. I began to get a sense of the intellects that would be sharing my space. After deliberation I chose 3 ducks and a drake. Cash changed hands and my new companions were tied together in pairs by the feet. I sat in the back seat of the car while the ducks muttered on the floor in front, which had been heavily lined with newspaper. I soon saw why.
I learned that the only thing dumber than a duck was four ducks. Short-term memory in these creatures can be measured in eyeblinks. They have serious co-dependency issues. They are impossible to house train. That said, they do possess a certain demented charm. The flock spent its mornings in expeditions around the garden, stopping periodically for conversations that sometimes became so heated I would leap from my office chair in alarm, certain that they had flushed a cobra. But they would just be standing there debating some fine point of duck philosophy at full volume while liberally decorating the path. Of course they spent a lot of time sailing elegantly around their pond, after tearing up all the pond plants and turning the water an unusual shade of green.
Randy the misnamed drake was singularly clueless, even for a duck. He swam, wandered, ate and slept with 3 attractive lady ducks for months before his hormones kicked in. As the ducks matured they began to display hopefully in front of him, bobbing their heads and murmuring seducktively. Randy observed these tactics blankly, but the roosters from the next field got the message and would sometimes try to mount a duck. This variety of duck only breeds under water, so the demonstration was not very enlightening to either gender. Randy and the ducks were unalarmed but puzzled, and the roosters were not having much fun either. About this time, the ducks began to take an unusual interest in each other. My pembantu at the time didn’t know the word for ‘lesbian’ and it wasn’t in the dictionary we relied on to communicate, but she never failed to call my attention to this activity with an embarrassed giggle.
Then one morning she found an egg in the garden. We admired its subtle blue colour. Ketut polished off the muck with a tea towel I hoped she wasn’t planning to use on my coffee mug later. We decided that Ketut should have it for lunch; we were both too fed up with duck muck to entertain immediate thoughts of expanding the flock.
As this discussion was going on, there was a sudden commotion in the duck pond. All the ducks were bobbing their heads vigorously like clockwork toys as they swam in tight formation. Suddenly, one disappeared under the drake, who quite submerged her in his unpracticed passion. He held her head under water with his beak and there was a lot of splashing as he had his way with her. “Together!” exclaimed Ketut with a grin. Randy had finally figured it out. The next morning and each morning after that, there were eggs all over the garden.
As the weeks went by the ducks became increasingly bold. Equating my appearance with food, they began to seek me out when they got hungry. This seemed endearing at first. They followed me around the garden, and I would wake from an afternoon nap on the patio to find four pairs of beady eyes regarding me obsessively from a few feet away. Then one afternoon I was at the keyboard when I heard a “Quack” much closer than usual. A duck stood in the middle of my carpet in the front room, very pleased with herself. The rest of the flock hovered at the front door gabbling in admiration. This was going too far; I immediately had an enclosure built around their pond. It is very low and they could easily fly over it, but it will take years for them to think through this concept.
Then the ducks went broody. They began to lay their eggs together in the same spot instead of all over the place, and practically sat on top of each other to keep them warm. By the time I left for a month’s trip they were sitting grimly on 9 eggs and I was confidently promising ducklings to all my friends. I should have known better. My house-sitter found one newly hatched ducklet trampled to death by its parents, and the next hatchling was promptly eaten by a snake. The ducks then rolled the remaining eggs into the pond as if to declare their experiment with parenthood over, and reverted to platonic companionship.
But a few weeks later, a glint appeared in Randy’s obsidian eye. He was soon ducking his harem in the pond, one after the other. Stay tuned for the next installment of When Ducks Go Bad….
