Duck, Duck, Go!

I recently wrote about having a duck curse. I’m not going to go into details but there were a number of bizarre duck instances in and around our new house which forced me to consult an online curse removal expert. She did some cursing, which I guess is how you remove a curse, and then my curse was gone.

Or so it seemed.

“Honey,” I said to my husband as I inspected all the new planters I had put out around the house and down by the lake. “Someone ripped out some of my flowers and threw them on the ground. Look!”

He walked over to where I was pointing and nodded his head.

I peered into the back of the planter to inspect the holes that were left. And that’s when I saw it.

An egg.

And not just any egg. A duck egg.

“Honey, we have an egg,” I said.

“An egg?”

“Yes, a duck egg, I assume. What should we do?”

“Make an omelette?” he said. I socked him.

I guess I shouldn’t have been completely surprised we had a duck egg. Earlier that week I had noticed a mallard couple swimming in front of our property, and I thought they were just admiring the view. Now I realized they were actually casing the joint. I guess they decided my flowerpot was the perfect spot for their new lakefront home, flowers be damned. Unfortunately, now that there was an egg involved, I couldn’t really chase the ducks away. I decided to live and let duck and walked away.

The next day I walked quietly down to the lake. There were no ducks around, so I figured they were out doing duck things elsewhere. I peered into the nest and that’s when I saw it.

Two eggs.

“We have two eggs now,” I said to my husband. “What should we do?”

“Frittata?” he said. I socked him.

“No, really.”

“Just leave them alone,” he said. “There’s probably going to be a lot more and we don’t want to scare her away.”

“More?” I said. “We’re going to need a bigger planter.”

I did have some concern now that things could get out of control. I had no idea how aggressive ducks could be when they were protecting their eggs. What if they tried to attack me? How would people react if I told them I was attacked by an angry mother mallard? Had anyone ever been duck-billed to death before? And most importantly, would a duck protection agency take away my right to play Duck, Duck, Goose?

These were the things that were keeping me up at night.

On the third day I went down to the lake, prepared to see a third egg. Both ducks were nowhere to be seen so I approached the planter and peered in.

There was not one egg. There were not two eggs.

There were no eggs.

It seemed that for whatever reason, the ducks had packed up in the middle of the night and flown the coop.

“Honey,” I said to my husband when I went back to the house. “The eggs are gone. What should we do?”

He shrugged. “Have cereal?”

©️2021, Tracy Beckerman, Lost Media Entertainment, LLC.

Note: Tracy’s new book, “Barking at the Moon: A Story of Life, Love, and Kibble” is now available! W. Bruce Cameron, author of “A Dog’s Purpose says he is “…utterly charmed by the whole thing, cover to cover.” To order your copy, CLICK HERE.