Brown-o and White-o are Terrified of Wooden Ducks
May 12th 2008 21:00
Photo by Bjarmason. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
Mucking around one day my sister and I stumbled across two old wooden ducks my parents bought from China. Both were mallards; one was male and the other was female. The male had the familiar green head while the female was brown all over. Bored, I put them in the bath tub to see if they would float. They sort of did – on their sides. So much for taking a bath with them. I then came up with the brilliant idea of leaving them in the backyard for our quackers to see. It never occurred to me they would be terrified of these wooden representations of their relatives. Surely they would take one look at them, recognize them as being replicas of their own species and want to play with, or at least, look at them.
My plan failed.
As I watched, Brown-o and White-o took one look at the wooden ducks and took off. I kept moving the wooden ducks towards them; the ducks kept fleeing.
Stupid ducks, I thought. You would think they would realise these wooden figures are harmless…
Later, I would spend countless evenings sliding the wooden ducks across our dining table while quacking at the same time, much to my mother’s annoyance. She treasured those wooden ducks and wanted them to be used solely as ornaments. She would say, “Put those ducks away” and I would ignore her to rile her up. The idea of having my grubby hands all over them, sliding them over the smooth (but possibly greasy) dining table almost gave her a heart attack.
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