My husband sat, eyes squeezed nearly shut, palm open over his brow, peering intently out the window by our kitchen nook. “Look at that white spot out there on the lake,” he said. “Do you suppose that’s one of our ducks?”
“No way,” I said, “looks like a piece of wood to me.” The mysterious object in question was near the beaver house, immobile on the lake’s icy surface. As the sun gained both warmth and brilliance and the thin skim of ice melted, the object began to swim and the duck’s identity was disconsolately established. Unlike the ducks in the contemporary joke, this duck did not fly away with the frozen lake. Since Peking ducks cannot fly, fate dictated that he die of hypothermia in the frigid lake water. That was several years ago and we learned a valuable lesson from our mistake - never allow ducks the freedom of the lake in Alberta’s late autumn. At the onset of winter lakes freeze from the outside edge, the deeper warmer water remaining free of ice considerably longer than the shallow shore. The thin film of ice along the shore becomes as effective as a fence, corralling flightless foul into the centre of the lake.
In August of this year we found ourselves once again in possession of a half dozen ducks. After a week or so in a pen to teach them that our farm was now home we led the ducks to the shore of the lake. A more delighted flock of ducks would be difficult to find than those six on that day! They bobbed and preened, splashed and luxuriated in the element in which they were born to reside. Remembering that frozen duck, we lured our new flock to shore daily for a feed of cracked wheat, keeping them tame and dependant.
Then, one by one they began to disappear. A hawk...an owl? Only two survived and, though they still came for their daily feed, they became as wary as wild ducks. They gobbled it up rapidly, retreating immediately to the water’s edge at the first sign of any unusual movement.
As September moved into the shimmering golden autumn of the aspen forest which covers a good portion of our farm, duck capture became a gnawing part of our daily consciousness. We tried the “Hansel and Gretel” approach, each day moving the chop a little further back, luring them further and further from the lake. Twice we sent our Border Collie, Mike, between them and the shore, but due to their small brains and kamikaze attitude herding them was impossible. Mike could only stop them by grabbing them one at a time! Thinking we’d capture one and the other would be left to die alone on the lake, avoiding the shore and the black, fearsome canine who he thought had eaten his brother duck, we told Mike to let them both go.
By Thanksgiving my husband had lost interest in the project. It had become tedious and time consuming and he had better things to do before freeze-up. But partial freeze-up had already come to the lake. On mild days when the ice thawed at waters edge I called them in my best ‘Here duck duck, quaaack, quaaack’ voice, but they would not come. Quite concerned as to their fate...I’m sure death by frozen duck syndrome had not occurred to them... they spent hours gossiping with the wild ducks who dropped by. It seemed they had forgotten where home was.
Undaunted, I decided to try surrounding the feeding area with a loop of page wire fence, hoping to rush between the ducks and the lake with a wire gate when hunger finally drove them in. But our sheep soon made a shambles of my wire trap and I had to go back to the drawing board for duck capturing ideas.
Time was drawing short. We began discussing the possibility of having to shoot them rather than allowing them to freeze. I had visions of a splash of red against white, a sudden and violent end to these unsuspecting free spirits. I still had hope. No I thought, let’s keep the gun on the rack for awhile yet.
One day after a rain the lake was completely free of ice. I was walking across the barn yard, heard the ducks quacking and saw them swimming toward their feeding area. My heart began to pound - now or never. I had to do something! I raced to the barn and grabbed the dog kennel they were kept in when we first brought them home, then I slid it along the ground to the top of the hill. I quickly captured our Akbash guardian dog and tied him up so he would not spoil my plan. I fetched a couple of bowls of chop and rushed to the water’s edge, calling, banging the pans against one another, hoping against hope the the ducks’ hunger would outweigh their fear. Little by little they waddled up the embankment, dodging and retreating, closer, closer, watchful, wary. I backed up with the pans to the kennel, placed them inside and edged away. They veered. I feigned disinterest. They moved up hesitantly and darted around the kennel, heads sliding back and forth on their long necks, glancing rapidly from side to side. At last one spied the bowl of chop inside and, casting caution aside, dove in and began to gulp back bill-fulls of grain. The moment the other one followed him in I pounced on the kennel door and slammed it shut. Hooray! At last! I raised a triumphant fist to the sky and shouted, “Yes! I caught the ducks! I caught the ducks!”
Since we could never eat two such brave survivors, our pet ducks now reside inside our barn with a hay house for warmth. The lake will be taboo for them until spring. Next year our duck roundup will begin earlier. Maybe we’ll get a few more to keep these two company, perhaps feed them inside a pen all summer, get them comfortable in an enclosure. Plan ahead, yes, next year we’ll plan ahead.
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I wrote this story many moons ago, not sure when but our Border Collie, Mike, has been gone for a long, long time. My husband used ducks in herding demonstrations at fairs. They are a spectacular site with their wings a-flap and people are amazed that a dog is able to walk them through a tunnel, over a bridge, into a tub of water, into a pen and back into the kennel they arrived in. Eventually we built a pen next to the lake with a portion of the lake incorporated into it. This sufficed for a few years until dry seasons lowered the lake’s level leaving the duck pen waterless. We no longer keep ducks but we still have the duck pen. The lake level has risen a lot in the last year or two...hmmm...maybe...?
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