The duck story

So yeah, we live on this sort of pseudo-farm, right? The Crumerosa as we fondly refer to it. And yeah, it's south of the river, and yeah we have goats and dogs and a barn and on the list of chores for the children is to "clean out the stall" once every couple of weeks. And yeah, I had to give my goat pepto...but some shit I just didn't anticipate.

My new neighbors are from the south side of Chicago. I think he's a Cook County Sheriff's Deputy or some such thing. I've never actually seen him in uniform, so I have no idea. To be honest we don't visit much with any of our neighbors until the weather gets nice. That's when we're all outside.

Anyway, the neighbors have no barn, but they do have a fenced in back forty and a pond that isn't overrun by fucking cattails. (Does ANYONE know how to chemically get rid of these things?) So they tell me last week that they're getting a donkey. Yes, I will officially live next door to a jack ass. AWESOME! As soon as they get a gate installed, the donkey is coming down. Apparently Mr. Neighbor has a cousin/uncle/relative who lives not far from us who has a farm and is giving him this donkey. It's 6 years old. Great.

They were also given, wait for it...3 ducks. Sounds great because they have a pond, right? Sure. Except there's no barn. There's no where to put the ducks at night when the COYOTES that have overrun Newton County are on the prowl. One duck, as Mrs. Neighbor put it, is too FAT to fly, one has a broken wing and can't fly and the other one flies just fine.

So the duck story...we let our dogs out on Friday. Alex typically takes them into the woods. After awhile I look out and I see a black duck hanging out near our pond. Hmmm....this does not bode well...I take a step onto the deck and see Alex circling the neighbor's pond and screaming at the top of his lungs. Mrs. Neighbor and annoying kid neighbor are also there. GREAT. So I put on a sweater and go to fetch my dogs who have run through the woods and entered the neighbor's property from the back and are chasing the non-flying ducks. PERFECT. They are retrievers, after all.

Krypton and Joe come right away when called by me, though they were doing a fantastic job of ignoring Alex completely. I put them in the barn and off I go to get Jessie 'the determined' who is swimming after broken-wing duck. Now this duck, while it cannot fly, can swim like a mutha. She is letting Jessie get close to her and then diving under water, swimming all the way across the pond and resurfacing on the other side. It was awesome! Jessie would swim around confused until she spotted her again and then doggie paddle her way over there. So now I'm screaming and throwing things at Jessie to try to get her to leave this damn duck alone. I think she got tired and finally swam over to me, where I chase her home. A little bit of dog food lured all of the dogs back into the kennel. No ducks were harmed in this exercise.

But now there's still one lonely duck hanging out in my yard, totally freaked out, and Mrs. Neighbor can't catch it. So I tell Owen, "We have to go get that duck home"...he groans at me, but puts on his coat and out we go. We come up behind it and walk on either side of it while it quacks at us nervously and walk it to the fence and through a hole in the fence. Now all the while this duck keeps trying to outfox us by dodging and turning and we keep blocking the paths we don't want him to take. It took probably 20 minutes to get this duck from my woods into his yard, and then Owen escorted him back to the pond.

My main point here is that we won't have to worry about these ducks for long. If my dogs could get in, then the coyotes can get in, and they are not nearly as nice as my dogs. We'll see how long this lasts. Until then, I can only turn my dogs out into the pasture, where they chase and scare the hell out of my goats. Seriously. This is my life.