Duckling Gold

The early June morning is different and I forget the ocean’s pretentious lordship over everything on the little lake in the Pacific Northwest.  Twelve newly hatched pintail ducklings emerge in military precision behind their mother.  She passes the admiring crowd around her: mallards, pintails, gulls and even the great blue heron nearby.  She is lord of this morning.  The ocean roar is silenced as they parade before the admiring crowd.  Even the clouds part and give way to sun on that glorious day.

The next day everyone pretends not to notice that 10 ducklings follow the mother.  The next day and the next day similar reductions occur.  And finally the mother does not appear because she also is dead.

Yet, one duckling remains.

The two-week old baby duckling scurries around the pond crying piteously for her mother who has died to keep her alive.  The baby still can be eaten in one gulp and only has two weeks of training from her mother beyond the instinctual knowledge she carries within her. 

 That afternoon a crow decides to have her for dinner.  She dives beneath the surface time and time again and eventually the crow leaves.  Later that day 15 pintail ducks give her hope of finding safety.  She swims frantically toward them, but the entire duck crew joins in a massive display of rejection.  She doesn’t seem to understand, “Perhaps they are my mother.  They certainly look like my mother.”  For several days, she approaches them, only to flee from their charge force.  Finally she understands that just because she looks like them doesn’t mean she belongs to them.  At three inches long and a weight of six ounces it is she against the world. 

It is now mid September. The Canada Geese come abruptly to the pond.  They assume complete control of the position once held by the pintail duck clan and fan out over the lake.  It is time for their fall convocation and they establish their own rules and regulations of conduct.  Early in the morning “Perky” the duckling--she now has earned the right to have a name--sees them and marshals her courage.  She scoots across the pond from her lonely outpost and paddles quickly to the very middle of this altogether goose gathering.  

Right into the center of the group she goes. 

She is not pushed away, so she swims in a narrow circle of her own in the very center of this goose club meeting. With geese on all sides, she feels so different, like being held in a huge goose container.  Two hours later she is still there, but she has stopped swimming and is still. She rests quietly, experiencing the peace that comes from being completely at home in the world for the first time.