Of Dead Ducks and Passing Days
Posted on | August 24, 2009 | No Comments
Over the weekend I went down to the tack shed to get feed for the birds and found Elroy dead next to the horse trough that serves as the duck’s pond.
Finding dead poultry isn’t all that unusual — with 20 or so birds at any one time — one tends to die every so often for one reason or another. But Elroy was different.
Elroy was an old duck. Ten years old to be precise. In a species where six is a ripe old age, 10 is positively ancient.
Elroy was the grandson of the first pair of ducks we bought at the feed store back in 1991. That first pair (Elroy and Judy after the characters in the Jetsons cartoon) produced four ducklings one mallard that grew to look just like dad (leading us to call all mallards “Elroy” from then on) and three hens. That group turned around and produced four more ducklings the next year, one of which was the now-deceased Elroy.
RIP Elroy Duck: 1999 - 2009
The original Elroy, his son, Judy and one of the other hens followed the call of nature the next winter and flew off to live at the pond next to our property, returning every so often to eat and visit, and occasionally bringing a wild guest or two with them. But Elroy the younger, and his five sisters stayed behind.
As the years passed we introduced new ducks to the flock (for the sake of genetic diversity), and the flock bred and grew — sometimes as large as 16, but usually between 8 and 12 — but for whatever reason, Elroy was always the only male.
Countless times I walked through the lower yard or the dry creek valley and saw “the girls” sitting under a tree quacking to each other while Elroy stood on watch a few paces away muttering quietly to himself. (If you didn’t know, female ducks make the characteristic “quack” that we identify as the duck sound. Male ducks make a quiet, mumbling or muttering sound. Ducks are a lot like people that way.)
Over the years Elroy’s sisters died, as did all but one of his granddaughters (Blackduck), but his great grandchildren, great great grandchildren, and so on, continued to live on an produce a new generation each year. After a while, Elroy had been here so long that I forgot that he’d lived two full duck lifetimes.
I forgot until Saturday morning anyway. Seeing old Elroy lying there motionless, looking every bit as colorful as he did a decade ago, I couldn’t help but be a little sad. We got a new male a while ago — “Aflac” a big, white Peking and former pet of a family friend who went off to college. He came along with a black and white female and they both seem to have integrated into the flock, so I doubt we’ll be short on ducklings next spring. But with Elroy’s passing, the last of the mallards have gone.
Goodbye Elroy. You’ll be missed.
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