Did you know that I used to have pet ducks?

Actually, I’ve had pet a lot of things during my life. My dad was the kind of guy who was always bringing home random animals to give to us as pets, and my mom was a total pushover when it came to animals: If you begged hard enough she would ALWAYS say yes.

In fact, she’s still like that, which is weird, because I think of my mom mostly as this rock hard terrifying woman who wears the pants around the house and knows how to say NO.

But not with animals.

The ducks were not something that my dad brought home, however. They were a school project that my grade six teacher thought would be a great idea for the class: Raising eggs and hatching them and then SOME lucky students whose parents were nice enough, would be allowed to take the ducklings home and continue to raise them from there.

I never got the latest Polly Pockets or Commander Keen, but I ALWAYS had good luck when asking for animals. So I was one of the lucky few that was going to be allowed to take the hatched ducklings home with me.

Except that I think my teacher quickly regretted this awesome idea and realized that it was more of a not-so-awesome DISASTER. None of the eggs hatched. They all died. We were grade six failures. Looking back, I’m sure my teacher was all, “Shit…”

I was disappointed but not crushed, because, after all, they were only eggs, and they had been sitting there looking nothing but boring for WEEKS.

But I guess my teacher thought I was more traumatized than I actually was, because he went ahead and got me some NEW ducklings that an EXPERT had raised and I was going to be able to take them home.

I named them Ivy and Vanilla and they were ADORABLE. Oh my GOD were they ever adorable. They would follow me around the yard going ‘peep peep peep peep’ over and over and over again. No matter where I went, they were always right behind me, two little soldiers scooting along.

They loved to eat slugs, and I’d spend so much time digging up slimy bugs and watching them try to wolf them down. It was like watching a dog eat peanut butter: Delicious, but difficult and sticky and oh-so-comical.

I’m sure you know where this story is going, but there IS a twist that you won’t expect, I promise.

The ducks died.

Not at the same time.
Vanilla died first. It happened when I was away on vacation and my parents were in charge. I remember phoning home and my mom sounded kinda funny, but I knew. I just had this gut feeling that something was wrong. She swore there wasn’t, but when I got home from my trip she admitted that my dad had been feeding them slugs, looked under a rock, and then put the rock down without thinking. Vanilla had scampered underneath at the worst possible moment.

Heartbreaking.

My parents rushed her to the vet, but there wasn’t much he could do.

Ivy died several months later, AGAIN while I was away. She had gotten big enough that we let her roam free, and at night she slept under the porch. One morning, she just wasn’t there. Probably an owl, but I never knew for sure.

Not so long after, a friend of mine called and asked if we could take HER ducks, the siblings of Ivy and Vanilla. She wasn’t allowed to have them anymore, and they were fully grown and would be GREAT. Just GREAT.

My dad built them an owl-proof hutch.
I was so excited to get Donald and Daisy, the grown-up versions of what my duckies should have become.

But it turns out they weren’t really like Ivy and Vanilla at all.

I don’t know how my friend had raised them, but they sure as hell weren’t interested in following me and peeping. They were a NIGHTMARE. I have this one really clear memory of my then-6 year old brother innocently wandering in the general direction of the duck hutch and suddenly being bowled over by a full-on attack.

I remember hearing this high pitched screaming and then my BROTHER, my little adorable BROTHER came running out into the middle of the yard, this HUGE muscovy duck attached like a pit-bull to his leg and beating the everlasting SHIT out of him. This little boy! This GIGANTIC duck! My mom running out and trying to drag the thing off of him while it went all Mortal Kombat Duck on her ass!

It wasn’t just my brother, though. It got so bad that we were ALL afraid of Daisy the duck, and, to a lesser extent, her pussywhipped husband-duck, Donald.

We put up with them for quite a long time, but we eventually gave them to my uncle, who had an entire island with just him on it – in other words, lots of room and no neighbours to sue him for not putting muzzles on his psychotic beasts.

Daisy, the mean one, outlived Donald, but they both lived a nice long life on the island, hanging out in the swamp and sometimes waddling down to the barn to harass the cat, who would scatter as soon as she saw them trundling along the road.

And That. Is the story of my ducks.