It isn’t everyone who’s blessed with the comical wobblings, yet subtle ninja-grace of the duckling. Whatever flights of fancy Mark and I may take on our trek through the forest of our youth, of this much I can assure you: The ducks were real.

We inherited them from a psychology experiment; a class that examined everything from Baby Albert’s crippling fear of fuzzy things to the breath of effort required to tip the average American into Nazi tendencies. At the end of the semester, we were given the challenge of training two quacking miniatures to request food by pecking a small red dot on the wall of their cardboard training center.  Our teacher, Mr. Miller, intended to give us baby chicks for the experiment, but someone piped up with the simple, yet wonderfully effective phrase, ‘Ducklins are cuter.’ Mr. Miller said the experiment probably wouldn’t work on ducklings, that they didn’t have the same inquisitive focus as the chick.  But, in the end, he couldn’t contend with such a watertight argument, and ducklins it was.

Mr. Miller could not have been more right.  We left our waddling students in solitude for a night, unfed with empty bowls, and returned the next morning with bags of golden feed.  We waited for them to explore their surroundings, smelling the earth, touching their beaks to promising spots, in search of a reward.  Instead, they twirled in helpless circles. It probably didn’t help that we were suckers for their oil-drop eyes and downy, pre-feather fuzz and would sneak them fistfulls of pellets at the first peeps of complaint. Who knows?  Maybe ducks are geniuses. We were also forced to compromise our work by showering obscene amounts of food we’d shower on their heads when they did amazing things like . . . walk. It was clear our experiment was going nowhere fast.

Our brains turned to more sinister endeavors.  Maybe we could train them to steal pencils, haunt kid’s lockers, fly above the lunch tables for arial white-bomb assaults.  But, sigh, no.  The ducks’ drive was elusive and seemingly in the opposite direction of our own. So we became content with our waddling ornaments, trailing behind us, so beautifully useless.

They followed us home where they had to be kept secret. Moms couldn’t appreciate the subtleties of webbed feet and quacking, instead measuring our guests by their appetites, racket, and - how do I say this - output.  The ducks hid out under the trampoline in Mark’s backyard.  He was forced to make excuses as to why he was overturning rocks to collect worms, and tackling the 100 pound golden retriever every time it tried to go outside.

Our ducks met a mysterious end. Whether they reside in the belly of a neighborhood dog, the burlap sack of a wandering hunter, or are out daring adventures of their own, equipped with nothing but Zen stares and feathered backsides, we’ll never know.

-C

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under All Comics, Incompletes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.