Our Thanksgiving With Ducks

As a treat on Thanksgiving day, Ginny and I fed ducks in Riverside Park a few blocks from our home. We saw a bald eagle soaring above as we strolled beside the lake.

Here’s an early 1900s postcard showing where we enjoyed this beautiful day:

Feeding the ducks reminds me of three things:

· Tony Soprano, the tv gangster;

· Our youngest daughter, Patricia, who plans to marry on January first;

· and The Lord God Almighty And His Duck Matilda.

I identify with Tony Soprano more than with any other character on tv. He’s my kind of guy. Sure, he cracks heads and breaks legs and makes problem people “go away”. I haven’t done any of that stuff, yet. But Tony and I are on the same wave length when it comes to ducks.

You’ll see why by the end of this posting.

Then there was the incident when our daughter fed the poor starving people…

Once when Patricia was 13 or 14 she encountered a poor family on her way home from school. Neither Ginny nor I were home at the time so Patricia decided to make up a food basket from canned goods and food from our kitchen. She packed a couple of grocery bags with cans of Spam, tuna, beans, powdered milk, etc. Also in her food basket for the poor, she placed a loaf of bread from the freezer..

Now for ages, Ginny has saved all bread scraps from family meals (crusts, moldy slices, half-eaten toast, broken cookie crumbs, etc) so that when we go to a park we’d have something to feed the ducks. It was Ginny’s custom to store these scraps in an old bread wrapper in the freezer until she accumulated a bagful. Also, she’d buy several loafs of real fresh bread at a time and freeze it till she was ready to use it.

You guessed it.

Patricia inadvertently gave the poor, starving family the duck food in the bread wrapper when she carried her two food packets to their house.

It wasn’t till Ginny got home that evening that the error was discovered!

Ever since then the whole family has teased Patricia unmercifully about being cruel to poor starving wretches by making them eat duck food.

Naturally, Ginny and I remembered that incident and laughed about it all over again yesterday.

Then, on a sad, sad note, as I fed ducks yesterday I remembered an entry in my diary on May 31, 2006. I repeat it here:

The Lord God Almighty and His Duck Matilda

My hat is old.
My teeth are gold.
I had a duck I liked to hold.
And now my story is all told.

These words of that great American poet Theodor Seuss Geisel, Dr. Seuss, (1904-1991) sum up my day Tuesday.

Yes, Matilda the duck is no longer with us.

Beginning on May 13^th, my blog has periodically chronicled how this wild duck came to stay in our back yard after being attacked by a raccoon.

We have fed the duck. We bought a pool for the duck. We protected the duck from neighborhood cats.

And we learned from the duck.

Ginny and I enjoyed a perfect day together yesterday. We lingered over coffee talking. We lounged in our swimming pool. We read our books. We napped. We enjoyed a two-hour lunch at a favorite restaurant talking about raising children, Indonesia, computers, and a host of other topics.

We decided that Matilda the duck no longer needs the refuge and safety of our yard. We decided that we should take her to a local park with a lake sprinkled with other ducks. We feared that as her wings became stronger she might fly over our fence and land in a neighbor’s yard among dogs. We decided that the best thing to do for her was to set her free.

It may sound dumb but we prayed about our decision.

Yes, we prayed for a duck.

The Scripture says that God knows every sparrow that falls.

Maybe so, but are ducks included in God’s care?

One of my favorite hymns is All Creatures Of Our God And King, written by St. Francis of Assisi. In his poem, Francis calls upon all nature, clouds, winds, birds, animals, men to praise our Creator.

When I looked at Matilda the duck, I’d also remember the words of the poet William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878).

Bryant watched a waterfowl flying across a marsh and thought about how the good Lord God guides us through life:

He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.

Sounds lovely, doesn’t it?

Ginny and I tossed a wet beach towel over a protesting Matilda.

We were carefully not to squeeze her or to break a feather.

Ginny drove while I cradled the frightened duck in my lap.

We parked as close to the lake as possible.

Here’s an old postcard showing where we released Matilda:

We carried a bag of bread scraps. Ginny scattered the crumbs in one place to attract the other ducks away while I unwrapped Matilda at the far side of the pond.

Oh, she was happy to be free.

In her own element, she flapped and dove and preened…

Then three male mallards saw her and attacked. They chased her around the edge of the pond. They chased her out of the water, pecking and grabbing her neck and fighting over her.

Were they killing her?

Were they mating?

I ran over and kicked the three males away.

Matilda ran quacking up under a hedge with the three males charging in hot pursuit. Great squawking and shaking of bushes.

Soon the three mallards emerged.

Alone.

They began chasing another female across the grass.

We searched the undergrowth, but saw no further sign of Matilda.

We think they killed her.

As a Christian I believe (barely) that Scripture which says, “We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose”.

That’s a tenant of my faith. But why does it so often seem otherwise in my day to day experience? Why do so many of our efforts seem so futile?

Why would God allow us the nurse this duck back to health only to have her raped or killed by her own kind?

That makes no sense to me in my limited human experience. Maybe it does make sense in some vast eternal plan, but it doesn’t seem right to me in the here and now where I live.

My faith says “Good”.

My experience says “Crap”.

I can not deny my personal observation of life; neither can I deny the love of God.

It’s hard for me but I try to move beyond my own observations and experiences to a place where I can say with Paul, the quintessential realist, “I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord”.

I believe that.

On a shallow level I really do believe that..

But sometimes, even when you do what is reasonable, even when you act with the best intentions, even when you plan ahead, even when you do what is right, even when you do what is logical, even when you pray — even then, your duck gets screwed.

Or worse.