Night Of The Living Duck

Remember that scene in Frankenstein where the villagers storm the castle carrying pitchforks and torches?

Ginny was at the computer by the window last night as I was cooking supper when she called out, “John, they’re bringing back the duck”.

I turned off the stove and ran with Ginny to the door where six excited neighbors had gathered bringing back “John’s Duck”. We all clustered in the drive discussing what to do with the escaped duck which apparently has recovered from it’s raccoon trauma enough to fly over the fence and escape from our backyard.

One shirtless young man, the one who carried the duck wrapped in his red tee shirt, had been a volunteer at BEAKS, a local bird rescue charity. Sherry, a lady from down the street, carried a cardboard cat carrier box from her vet to put the duck in. Dennis, Captain of the Neighborhood Watch, suggested we all go to Riverside Park and release the duck at a pond there which is frequented by wild ducks. Scott came from across the street to see what the gathering was about; he’d been raking his yard and carried his garden rake in a way that reminded me of the Frankenstein movie.. . The BEAKS volunteer put the duck in the wading pool Ginny had bought for it and all watched the duck bob for Cheerios I tossed to it.

The villagers Our neighbors had captured the beast down the street where all joined in a lively chase trapping the duck against a fence. How anyone knew that this was “John’s Duck”, I have no idea because neither Ginny nor I had mentioned the duck to anyone, but in our community word travels fast.

So, “Matilda” (Ginny’s name for the duck) or “Captain Tripps (my name for the duck) once again resides in the kid’s wading pool till further notice and peace returns to the sleepy village.

This was not the Cowarts first encounter with a wild bird. Years ago when the kids were all living at home, we encountered a seagull and I wrote a humor article about it for the local newspaper. If you’d like to read it, the article is called, The Hand Of The Almighty Smites A Seagull; it’s in the bottom left-hand column at www.cowart.info .