Last Christmas, I gave my true love neither two turtledoves nor three French hens, but rather four ducklings. (Surprise pets are often a bad idea, but we’d been considering ducks for a while and had plans for “someday.”) It was a sad winter, and that tiny quartet brought so much chaotic joy to the darkest months.
The first thing you learn about ducks is how messy they are. Science still hasn’t found a way to keep them from spilling and splashing their drinking water.
The second thing you learn is how fast they grow. Chicks are embarrassingly late bloomers compared to a basically full-grown 2-month-old duckling.
The third is how goofy they can be. They call gooses silly, but it’s ducks who should be part of that idiom. It is silly how deliriously joyful the smallest puddle makes them. It is silly how they all take turns picking up a large walnut shell left behind by some squirrel, clacking it around in their bill for a while, then dropping it and quacking at it reproachfully for not being food. How they bop their heads violently when they see you reach for the bag of worms. When they stand stone still — as though Medusa herself had transformed them — watching the neighbor’s roofer for 20 minutes, just to make sure he isn’t an eagle in disguise. When they hop like fat bunnies to pick a berry just out of reach. When they bill around for bugs and come up grass-stained and covered in mud, they are all happier for it.