Duckling traffic

Posted on by Vincent


I went to Mama Iris’ for a breadfruit and a pound of yam. I’d taken the camera to snap a vent on the roof of the Baptist Church, next to the Mosque. A man was standing in the crossroads, in the traffic’s way, so I went to see why. Ducks were taking to water and everyone made way for them. Mother was proud and brave, not frightened of humans or cars, choosing to travel in the gutter rather than on the safer pavement. She could smell distant water and followed the downward slope. It was on my way home so I kept an eye on her, a 21st-century Beatrix Potter to her Jemima Puddleduck.

ventilator on the nearby Baptist Church roof

All was fine as we crossed another road junction. Mother fanned out her tail into an air-raid shelter in case the worst happened. She feared only the red kites who soar overhead in these parts hoping to dine on chicks. She was worried that hers had travelled far already on their tiny legs with no rest or snacks.

The stream is not on the lowest ground because it was diverted in Victorian times and flows between old factories. I reported recently on the little waterfall where it rushes over a boulder through snagged twigs and plastic debris to rush down a culvert, which emerges on the other side of Oakridge Road, behind the White Horse Pub, as a quiet shady stretch fit for the raising of duck families.

I did not know how to convey this information to Mrs Duck. A young woman stopped her car to suggest we call the RSPCA. She would probably have agreed with Prime Minister Blair that families need the support of institutional resources. I’m of a different political persuasion, one which thinks civilized humans should build their nests and ensure they have resources enough before begetting extra mouths to feed. I don’t know if ducks have such forethought, but told the woman that the duck would soon find her way to the river.

Mother Duck turned off into a neglected factory car park and tried repeatedly to find a passage through a thicket of brambles and thorn bushes. Walking a mile or two in her webbed feet, I’d have done the same. The intrepid three were safe here from heavy wheels but off course for their destination. Mother duck must do her best now.

I’ve made my decision to trust Nature, its trial and error, its profusion, its risk. The other choice is a global zoo, managed for ever by a species that can’t even manage itself.

15 thoughts on “Duckling traffic”

  2. Vincent,
    Yes. So many times I see a world spinning out of control in chaos and then…I see a mama duck with her ducklings and I think of the biblical passage that gave man dominion over the earth and all of its inhabitants…and then I think how foolish mankind really is not to embrace the teacher that is right in front of his eyes in that duck family. We insult each other, kill each other, and hate each other for reasons no one seems to be able to define, and yet there are rationalizations for intolerance everywhere. We could learn a lot from a duck.

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  5. Thanks for the comments but don't get too sentimental about ducks. I have seen the male ones, drakes, fight one another for hours over a female, till all the combatants are tattered and unattractive, their breast feathers pecked off and their skin raw.

    But I have also read recently that bad behaviour in animals is often linked to captivity, or the restricted conditions imposed by sharing the diminishing wild spaces with humans.

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  6. What do you think, Vincent, Darwin in action or the effects of captivity?

    (And I get sentimental at the drop of a hat….I'm sappy that way…like I think chimpanzees are so very cute to watch on television, and yet they prove their DNA isn't too far off from ours when you watch some of their more aggressive societal behaviors 🙂

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  7. Personally prefer to think that am descended (curious concept that .. descent .. heh) from the Bonobos.

    They are a far more peaceable tribe of primates, and tend to solve conflicts with sex .. the original “Make love, not War” lot.

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  8. no, I would never sentimentalize ducks. Years ago I spent a summer living on a lake. Used to sit and watch the wild ducks – the males were rapists and gang-bangers.

    I think humans are not nearly as special or different – in wickedness or in goodness – as most like to think.

    Old cultures who live closer to the wild often call animals brother and sister – that seems just about right to me. And we shouldn't ignore the old tales of war among the animals. It happens.

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  9. So what of this 'instinct' that so drives these beasts? Good or Bad or Indifferent, Thought and Reason, or Mechanical Automatism and Processes, Dead Action or Caring?

    Great example to ponder on, Vincent, Thanks.

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  10. Well, Jim, I don't judge the instinct of animals. Including human animals.

    Foxes kill and eat chickens and ducks – when they get the chance. Packs of hounds kill foxes – when they get the chance. Hunters keep hounds in kennels – ditto. Parliaments ban hunting – ditto. The “Countryside Alliance” will overturn the ban – ditto.

    So even when rules of behaviour are made up and given out as “God's Law”, people still behave instinctively – when they get the chance.

    Rape, genocide, torture are part of our instinctive inheritance, along with things so noble and altruistic we feel that they come from God.

    But that is just a description for those beautiful and noble feelings that we are fortunate to have.

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  12. This is the first poem my dad taught me, by Ogden Nash.
    Behold the duck,
    it does not cluck,
    cluck it lacks,
    it quacks.
    It's very fond
    of a lake or a pond
    & when it sups . .
    bottoms ups!

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