{"id":2676,"date":"2026-08-13T06:47:37","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T10:47:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/?p=2676"},"modified":"2026-08-13T06:47:37","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T10:47:37","slug":"the-odd-duck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/the-odd-duck\/","title":{"rendered":"The Odd Duck"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/span>We lost Beaker today.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>She was, and I don\u2019t mean this metaphorically, an odd duck.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>A typical duck, a Gordo or Bubbles or even Quakimodo, likes to be with other ducks.\u00a0 There are big duck parties in the morning when fresh water is delivered. There are duck\u00a0 naptimes under the evergreen tree with duck-on-duck snuggling.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Ducks have favorite ducks. Gordo has Quackimodo. Bubbles has Bubbles the second,\u00a0 the two most handsome, gayest ducks that have ever ducked.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>But Beaker liked to do her own thing. She was often by herself, investigating whatever\u00a0 caught her attention in the moment. Mostly bugs. Sometimes mud. Often nothing at all.\u00a0 She liked people, but I wonder if that\u2019s because she didn\u2019t really understand that we were\u00a0 different from her. To Beaker we humans were just big, less attractive ducks.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Beaker never shouted. Unlike Quackhilda who only ever screams. She happy screams.\u00a0 Angry screams. Screams for joy. She is the loudest duck we have, and she wants everyone\u00a0 to know it.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Beaker was the last egg to hatch this summer. She took a long time, and I was worried\u00a0 about her. She seemed fine as a duckling. Maybe a little nervous, definitely smaller than\u00a0 the others, but healthy. It was only once she lost her soft, butter yellow duckling fuzz and\u00a0 grew her bright white adult feathers that I realized she was different.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>A unique duck.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>A duck of distinction.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>She was small, yes, but no longer nervous. Where Bubbles one and two panicked at\u00a0 every overhead observation, airplane, crow, leaf blowing in the wind, Beaker was\u00a0 unbothered. She rarely entered the fray around the larger pool where Quackimodo,\u00a0 Quackhilda and Jane bobbed their heads vigorously, letting Gordo know that they were\u00a0 ready to get down to duck sex. Everyone stopped bobbing at Bubbles and Bubbles quickly.\u00a0 They only have eyes for each other.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>I was worried that we were going to have to get rid of the Bubbleses. You don\u2019t want\u00a0 too many drakes in a flock. Ducks, it turns out, are sex addicts. And they have corkscrew\u00a0 shaped penises. I don\u2019t think I need to go into detail. Let\u2019s just say that things can get ugly\u00a0 with too many drakes or too few hens.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>But even with Beaker\u2019s total disinterest in carnal duck love, the flock is fine. Gordo is\u00a0 the only drake interested in the hens. Bubbles one has Bubbles two and they are desperate\u00a0 for Gordo to love them as well.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>That\u2019s all to say that when Beaker got her adult feathers, it was clear she was an odd\u00a0 duck. She\u2019s got a tiny head. Not that any ducks have huge heads. They are bird brained\u00a0 after all, but Beaker was the littlest head among little heads. Distractable. A loner. She\u00a0 liked to hang out with Jake, my husband, not a duck, while he mowed the lawn, or ran loud\u00a0 power tools.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>She would object to going to bed long after all the other ducks were tucked into the\u00a0 coop for the night. Preferring a little personal time with whoever came out to shut the door\u00a0 against evening predators.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Beaker liked to dunk her entire head in a puddle, in search of buried worms, and wear\u00a0 her mud hat for the day. She was a dirty duck.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Maybe because she was uninterested in duck sex, she was also uninterested in laying\u00a0 eggs. Quackimodo and Jane lay eggs every day. Quackhilda, the screamer, is currently\u00a0 molting, but once she\u2019s all feathered up again, she\u2019ll be back to her champion egg laying\u00a0 as well. Beaker couldn\u2019t be bothered with something like eggs. She was a free bird.\u00a0 Untethered.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>We\u2019ve lost a number of ducks over the years. But it\u2019s been a long time. I had started\u00a0 to think that we\u2019d solved the puzzle of duck safety, even in the deep of winter where every\u00a0 carnivore for miles around can smell our ducks. They must look delicious to foxes, to the\u00a0 coyotes I hear call to each other at night, to the bobcat I see wander through the field near\u00a0 our house, to the fisher cat that everyone in town assures me is around, to the weasel that\u00a0 killed all 14 of my friend\u2019s chickens in a bloody rage.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>My flock are Pekins. Lovely and white. Friendly and chatty. If you say, \u201cHey ducks!\u201d\u00a0 to them, they answer \u201cQUACKQUACKQUACK\u201d right back (though that\u2019s mostly\u00a0 Quackhilda). But Pekins can\u2019t fly. So, my beautiful, slow, flightless, foolish, defenseless\u00a0 ducks must look like the very best thing in the world to hungry carnivores. It\u2019s February,\u00a0 and duck is delicious.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>We didn\u2019t crack the code. Obviously.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Hawks don\u2019t care about our fence. Or our predator deterrent balloon that we dutifully\u00a0 hang in the tree over the duck pen. They don\u2019t care about the owl statue that hoots if you\u00a0 get too close. They don\u2019t care that we shoot pellets at them with a slingshot when they\u00a0 come flapping around.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>I found Beaker\u2019s mauled carcass this afternoon.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>You might think it\u2019s nothing to lose a duck. No one says that ducks are man\u2019s best\u00a0 friend. No one makes posters about duck ladies for Harris.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>It\u2019s okay.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>You didn\u2019t know Beaker, an odd duck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0We lost Beaker today. \u00a0She was, and I don\u2019t mean this metaphorically, an odd duck. \u00a0A typical duck, a Gordo or Bubbles or even Quakimodo, likes to be with other ducks.\u00a0 There are big duck parties in the morning when fresh water is delivered. There are duck\u00a0 naptimes under the evergreen tree with duck-on-duck snuggling. … Continue reading The Odd Duck<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4227,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6855],"tags":[],"issue":[6885],"class_list":["post-2676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-fiction","issue-6885"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-22 15:15:03","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4227"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2676"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2679,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2676\/revisions\/2679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2676"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/plum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=2676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}