Duck Diaries Part II

It's amazing how fragile a duck's clutch of eggs is. The laying process takes a week to ten days, the incubation process another 25 or so days, and then there's the perilous existence of the hatchlings, which, after surviving birth and the subsequent threat of predation, they have to follow their mother on the journey to her chosen wetland area where they will learn to feed and swim and survive. We've had a couple of close calls where we thought the mama duck was scared off and would not return. One time, she was gone the whole night while some racoons (a mama and her young ones) were prowling about. She returned shortly after sunrise.

Nevertheless, I'm not sure how she and her eggs will survive the constant visits of curious children and adults, as well the animals of the small forest in front of our townhouse.

It's amazing how tati and i have become so attached to this duck and her clutch. I've gotten into the habit of urinating around our house to "mark territory" because I read somewhere that it would deter predators from snooping around. Of course someone always tends to appear when I'm doing it and so I get flustered and try to explain what I'm doing. One time I was concentrating deeply on marking territory when I happened to look up and directly to my left, a relative of my neighbor is smoking a cigarette. He's Korean, and I don't know how much he understands me but he says, "yeah yeah yeah" like he does--apparently unfazed by the need to mark territory for whatever reason.

Today there was a rough storm but Mariposa (the mama) handled it with the calm and aplomb of a professional egg incubator. There were reports that hail might come through the area but fortunately that didn't happen. Life's delicate strength abides.

Haiku Elegy

For Richard Rorty
it matters not. believe this:
it matters not...NOT!

duck diaries; aka mariposa butterfly mama manuscript

A brown duck decided to lay her eggs and nest in the small strip of dirt in front of our apartment that family housing calls a garden, and which many a family--with much care and stewardship--actually makes into one. Our family doesn't. We let the weeds grow and in the fall when they turn brown, with any luck, Tati puts on her dishwashing gloves, grabs a small implement associated with gardening and hacks the weeds into mulch. In the spring and summer they grow back again--taller and more stubbornly rooted in than before.

This spring-summer term, as we were arriving home, Camila (in a pissy mood at the time) commented on how nice our neighbor's garden was, adding offhandedly that ours was less than beautiful-- or hideous or something close to that. It was late, or I would have gotten out our small, futile gardening implements and asked her to do something about it. Instead, as Tati and I were smoking outside later, I suggested we buy some toy or inflatable dinosaurs that we could put in our garden so that our weeds would seem like exotic prehistoric food instead of a family housing eyesore and a cosgrove-calixto-pena embarassment.

But just when you think your grass is not greener, along comes a little new life to make worrying about the relative color of your grass seem irrelevant. Welcome "mariposa butterfly," who has chosen our hideous little garden to hatch a family. More in the next installment of the duckie diaries.