The Contraceptive Ducks

How to turn a problem pregnancy (someone else's) into a disaster in your garden

I was once asked by a woman, during a discussion concerning women's reproductive rights, if I became pregnant without having expected or planned the pregnancy, would I bear the child? Today, I am without children, may be past the point of no return or at least past the point of diminishing returns against the odds of conception, I have no mate or confirmed masculine presence in my life, and no immediate prospects for making a family. Considerations of these items jogged a memory enfolded in the mythology of making a family.

Inspired by Gunter and Ida Oswald and their children, les Milles Fleurs.

<this is a draft> It was my great fortune once to live in a quiet community near Austin, Texas with my husband during the late 'eighties. Our lives were as close to perfect as a warring couple's could be. Our pleasures were limited to the penury afforded us through his Ph.D program stipend. One of my affordable pleasures was the postage stamp garden in our yard. The long Texas growing seasons hosted winter vegetables, cut flowers, and the decadence of vine ripened tomatoes.

Although we could produce from our garden, we would not otherwise reproduce, as in children. When Susie's biological clock announced the tremulous plea for pregnancy, the answer was always a slightly exasperated, and wisely counseled 'No.'  We cannot afford to have a baby. It would be a mistake to get pregnant before I finish my degree. I don't want any wife of mine having to work and raise a baby, and I don't want any baby of mine in day care because the woman has to work out of necessity.

Well, who the hell in this modern world wants any of that anyway?

We both bore the deprivation of childlessness in our early thirties like a shield between us. Sex was an issue if it put us at risk of conceiving. Contraceptives were an economic necessity. The rent always came first.

There was a woman in my work place who stood up to the mythology, faced it down boldly and got pregnant. We worked together in very close personal proximity in our office. I spent, on average 45 hours per week in her company, and probably somewhat less with my mate. Six months into her pregnancy, I got pregnant too.

The beginning of my own pregnancy announced itself in a series of bizarre dreams. I recall waking one morning to a sense of a thrilling well being and adrenaline racing through my veins. I had dreamed of giving birth to a baby at the office. I recalled very clearly seeing and feeling the baby's head and arms emerging from between my legs. I did not dream in pain, but I did dream in color. Several other dreams followed the first one. In my household, and in the office, we treated these birthing and pregnancy dreams as a recurring source of female humor. So, did you have any more children last night?

I missed a period, began to gain weight, my abdomen swelled slightly, and my breasts would hurt frequently. I used a home pregnancy test which came out negative. I called my physician's office. The nurse practitioner suggested that in the absence of a tumor or other serious organic malfunction, I was probably experiencing mild psychosomatic symptoms. In otherwords, a false pregnancy. Happens all the time, and not too surprising considering the company I had been keeping. She encouraged me to take it in stride, exercise, eat healthy, and try to find an entertaining occupational outlet to deal with the emotional stress of being continuously exposed to the topic of pregnancy.

One afternoon in early April, as I was driving home from work, I noticed the sign at the Oak Hill Feed & Seed. "Baby Ducks 2 $5." This was all the incentive I needed to resolve my pseudopregnancy guilt complex. I whipped my little blue car into their parking lot in a heartbeat. Twenty minutes later, shy of my $5 plus the cost of a 10-pound bag of duck food, I had obtained two cheeping Fawn Indian Runners, sex unknowable. I christened my charges Popeye and Dorcas. I lined a cardboard box with old towels and placed them in the guest bedroom.

The spouse arrived home. He pulled the usual exasperation routine, reminded me that we already had three cats who would eagerly consume the two ducks if they got the chance, and why did we need an increase in the household headcount, anyway? Did I keep the receipt from the feed store? Would they take the duckies back if he begged them to?

I calmed my spouse the grouse's worries and dispatched him to the lumberyard for housing supplies. That evening, he built the ducklings a large, functional hutch which we installed in the guest bedroom complete with warming light.

The duckies did the trick for me. Each evening, home from the travails of work in the pregnant banking arena, I would sit and watch television with my tiny, docile, silky charges nestled in a towel on my lap. The predatory cats I disciplined with stern lectures about "cat stew" recipes just in case anyone got smart ideas about killing my precious fluff balls. The ducklings grew very rapidly, and in a matter of two weeks were tall enough to intimidate the cats. My own personal cat Ms. Hobbes came to accept Dorcas and Popeye completely. She would sit patiently still while Popeye groomed her fur with his bill.

The other two cats, Ulysses-the-Moose and Klio, never did see any redeeming value in the ducks, and would flee from the flapping quackers any time they got too close.

Eventually, as the weather warmed and the ducklings became young adult ducks, Popeye and Dorcas went to live in the backyard, their hutch under the peach trees for shade. Their lives were lazy, complete, and safe. Popeye grew into a crafty, intelligent, handsome drake duck. Poor Dorcas never developed any brainpower and always depended on Popeye for guidance.

Popeye and Dorcas were the divine comedy, and much cheaper than a matinee movie. I had to teach Popeye and Dorcas to swim in the bathtub. Popeye caught on immediately, but little Dorcas struggled and flailed about in a panic. I gently held her in my hands at the level of the water until her bobbing body stabilized. As soon as she was able to balance on her own, she did just fine.

Popeye attacked the water like a duck possessed. Not being content to paddle back and forth in the tub, Popeye began diving under the water and racing about the perimeter of the tub in an antic I dubbed "Submarine Duck Racing." Of course, he managed to slosh about ten gallons of water out of the tub onto the floor. Very soon thereafter, Popeye acquired his very own plastic swimming pool in the back yard. When engaged in submarine duck racing around the perimeter of his pool, he would give a kick with his legs and shoot out of the water straight up into the air. Quite the athlete, my Popeye. I would howl with glee whenever he pulled this stunt.

Once the ducks were expatriated permanently to the back yard, Popeye constantly worked out ways to get back inside the house. He would lead sneaky forays up on the deck, through the back door, and into the kitchen to steal the cats' food. Dorcas would follow, often serving as the Trojan Duck. When I would catch Popeye and Dorcas snitching food from the kitchen, I would holler "Ducks Out!" from the living room. Popeye would turn tail and flee, but idiot Dorcas just stood there in confusion until I showed her back outside. Not content to get Dorcas in trouble, Popeye also invited the local sparrows to partake of the cat's food in the kitchen. One fine Saturday morning, we had two ducks flap-quacking in the presence of four sparrows on my white linoleum floor.

The ducks were now about two months old, and it was high summer in Central Texas. As family gardener, this meant the ripening and eventual harvest of my tomato crop. As my juicy, plump fruit ripened under the Texas sun, I began experiencing severe predation problems which became uncontrollable, and I could not account for the source. Our fenced yard was protected by large, ferocious barking dogs on two sides, so raccoons and o'possums rarely troubled with my little postage stamp paradise. The predations continued without explanation. I was rapidly losing my tomato crop, but I could not come to grips with the vandals.

Popeye relished the seasonal invasion of Japanese beetles. They would emerge from the lawn at dusk, and Popeye would dash madly around the yard snapping them up with comedic, lethal accuracy. It was excrutiatingly funny to watch my little drake go on a bug hunt. It was then that I noticed that while Popeye hunted the beetles, Dorcas was in the garden polishing off the last of my unblemished tomatoes. I had given the ducks access to my garden so they could control the insects, which they did. I think they ran out of bugs and went right on to the goodies.

Before we left Austin, Popeye and Dorcas went to live at my cousin's farm where they have a large pond and lots of other ducks. I went to visit them one afternoon with a large sack of tomatoes to feed to Dorcas. My cousin was appalled that I would waste so many tomatoes on a couple of stupid ducks. I saved some for him so he would not feel so deprived.

If through some divine mystery of intercession I turned up pregnant tomorrow, in mid-life, unmarried, unprepared and uninvited, I could not tear a life from my body. Personally, I could not do that.

--sww