Duck Drama

Carrie Rose has been tied to a small island just off the town of Westport, Ontario. We spent Canada Day there. It has been hot but the weather started to break. Severe thunderstorms passed within sight north along a ridge of the Westport Mountains. Each of the last three mornings the barometer was a little lower and today I watched it drop all day. This coincided with a dire weather report that never materialized at our location.

I am not sure why I am bothering with a weather report when my true concern here is the plight of two ungainly ducks that inhabit the island we were tied to. The island is about 150 feet by 50 feet. It is shaped like a truncated banana and is inhabited by the harbormaster’s hut, numerous picnic tables with umbrellas, a gazebo, and two mangy ducks, or at least there used to be two of them.

We have grown used to seeing robust specimens of waterfowl. That was not the case with these two. They stood about two feet, and walked tall with their bodies and necks pointed to the sky. These ducks are not used to eating greenery. They have been corrupted by boaters and sightseers alike. Why eat grass when you can feast on ice cream, bread, chips, etc., etc.

A gaggle of kids were on the island when we first arrived. They did a bang up job of feeding the ducks, thus we did not interact with them. But on our last day, the duck’s enablers had mostly departed, so whenever we appeared on deck the alpha duck raced towards us quacking up a storm. Something was not right though. There had been two ducks as I stated above and now there was only one. We assumed that beta duck was off in the weeds and would appear soon enough.

I would be remiss if I did not provide some backstory on beta duck. Both ducks had scraggily feathers, mostly off white on their backs with kind of a sickly orangey-brown mat on their chests. Their bills were flesh colored and their feet bright orange. I noticed right off that beta duck carried its starboard leg in an odd fashion when sitting down. And when it got up to walk, it did so with a pronounced limp. It was a “sitting” duck I proclaimed. Unfortunately, this proved prescient.

Later in the day when beta duck had not surfaced we enquired from the harbor master’s French-Canadian daughter about the ducks and she said, “A weee…salll bite his neck last night.” Charlotte and I both looked at each other as we mouth the word, and suddenly said in horror, “A weasel!”

Not to anthropomorphize, but alpha duck looked forlorn as he quacked from one side of the island to the other. We will never know if he roamed in a quest for food or for his lost companion, the “sitting” duck.