Our Adventures with Madame Qwackers - Duck, it's what's for dinner.

I grew up around animals in my summers in the Northwest as well as various farms I spent time at in the Brunswick area. I caught raccoons, shot squirrels, emasculated wild hogs, and many other things boys do growing up in the South. I remember the first time I helped prepare a chicken for dinner at The Hostel west of I-95 when one of the hens got caught in the chicken wire and broke her wing, the question wasn’t,  ”Do we try to save the chicken?” The question was,” Are we having fried chicken or baked chicken?” Let’s face it, birds like ducks and chickens are always on the Southern menu. Personally, I love duck with rice, okra and tomatoes with a slice of cornbread. In defense of my mother, she never encouraged us to hunt or catch, hunt or eat wild critters. As a boy, it was easy to hang out with friends that did. Even my grandmother introduced me to southern foods, such as raccoon via some friends of ours. Yep, this was me over twenty years ago as a young boy in the South.  Let’s flash forward to me, just this week.

I woke up like any other morning with early conference calls with my offshore teams. My oldest daughter had a typical morning of rushing off to a school club, orchestra or some quiet time to finish her homework before the day started.  She rushed out the door, and a few minutes later she returned. At this point, I was still upstairs, but I looked outside and all my girls were chasing a duck. I asked,” What are yall doing?”  Of course, no one stopped chasing the duck, who kept waddling just out of distance of my family.

“Dad”, my youngest daughter exclaimed, “we are trying to catch this duck. She’s hurt.” I looked at the duck. He looked healthy. Just then she moved far enough away to nibble on an acorn when I noticed that her lower beak was broken.  Thinking back to my primal instincts, I’m thinking there is an easy solution to this problem. Catch the duck, and eat the duck for dinner.  The problem is, my daughter, Lauren, is the Snow white of my family, and I knew eating the duck wasn’t going to fly.

I grabbed a blanket to catch the duck. I’ve caught injured birds in the past with a blanket. Why not catch this duck. I slowly approached the duck with my blanket and opened the blanket just as I approached close enough to throw it on the duck. The problem is that the duck could still fly, and I must have looked like a large bear or wolf about to eat her. She spread her wings and took off out of my yard right into the road where a car was whizzing by. “NOOOOOO!”, a shrill scream came from my youngest daughter as tears welled up into her eyes and immediately blinded her from the emotion of the car hitting the duck. Lucky for me, the duck and the car missed each other. The duck flew.  At this point, the duck was safe to die in someone else’s yard or far enough away my daughter, Snow White, would not find her.  For the next fifteen minutes before the school bus arrived, my girls looked for the duck, but she was gone.

I finished my morning calls, and wanted to step out of my home office for some fresh air and lunch when I looked in my driveway, and the duck was back. I already untangled a truck net in case she returned, but I thought I would call my brother in law, Skipper, for a second opinion. Skipper is a licensed falconer with a lot of experience with raptors. I figured he may be able to help me here.  “Hey Skip.”

Before I continue, Skip raises, quail, chickens, hawks and other birds for both food and hunting, depending on the bird.  One Christmas, my kids were excited to watch Skipper train his bird, Thor, to hunt geese. Now, hunting geese isn’t natural to a hawk, so this was quite a feat, and my second daughter, Anna was so impressed by it, she took in the film of the hawk killing a goose to show and tell. Skipper knows birds.

“Hey Matt, what’s up?”

“Well Skip, there is a hurt duck in my yard. Her beak is broken, and I’m trying to catch her for my girls to get the duck some help. Any thoughts?”

Skip was quick to respond,” What about duck and rice?” Personally, I’d thought about this already, but Snow White would be very upset if I ate her duck.

“Skip, I can’t eat the duck. Lauren is already upset the duck is hurt, and I need to catch it.”

“You got casting net?”, Skip questioned.

“No, but I have a truck net that may do the trick. Anything I need to worry about?”

“If your net has any weights on it, don’t hit the duck in the head with the weights.” Great advice. Luckily, my net didn’t have any meter, and it seemed to have enough weight in the net to catch the duck.

My wife and I went outside again to try to catch the injured duck. She was in my driveway trying to eat acorns again. I figured she would return to try to grab a snack. I also knew she was going to starve with her broken beak or die of dehydration. As before, our attempts to catch her were futile. She stayed just out of range of the net, and if we got her too worked up, she would fly down the street. At one point, I followed her to a neighbor’s yard and walked her back up to my yard to try again. It was like waking a dog without a leash, but she just wouldn’t let us get close enough to catch her. I could walk behind her and guide her anywhere I wanted her to go but a cage.  We tried a few more times in our yard to try to catch her before she flew off and out of sight.

By this time, I had posted our adventure on our neighborhood Facebook page to keep everyone in the neighborhood entertained. I also have some great neighbors that really cared about what happened to the duck, and they insisted we keep them updated.  I relayed our defeat at Johnson Ferry where the duck escaped somewhere to the north of us down the road. Apparently the duck generated a lot of interest because about the time the elementary school bus started into our neighborhood, people were reporting sightings of the duck. When my son Cole, came inside, he informed me that my wife, Bobby was down the street trying to catch the duck. When I arrived to the scene, a flock of women were encircling the duck while their gaggle of children watched when my wife reached in and grabbed the duck. We had her.

I had called our local vet earlier. She said if I can catch the duck that she would take a look at it. I called the vet, and let her know I was on the way.  I took the now kenneled duck, and heading a few miles down the road to the vet. When I got there, I was warmly welcomed by one of the technicians.

“What is the name of the duck?”, she asked.

“It’s duck, D U C K, but my daughter, Lauren, named her Ms. Qwackers.”  At this point, I’m thinking I’m taking this duck to the vet to put her down. The technician takes the duck, and a few minutes later, the vet appears.

“Minus the beak, you’re duck is very healthy and pretty friendly.” The doctor says. “Her bill was either ripped from a fishhook or bit by a snapping turtle.” I failed to notice the duck was now my duck at this point. “I think we can fix her lower beak. It’s ripped pretty far back, and some of her skin is missing. Also, some of the flesh is necrotic and I’ll need to remove it.” I thought to myself, my luck. The duck may live.

Now that my mind moved from thinking about duck, its what’s for dinner to duck, the new animal in my house, I wanted to make sure this duck was going to get a sporting chance.  I had an important question. “Mam”, I said,” How much is this operation going to cost?”, I asked.” I’m willing to put in about two hundred dollars on the duck.”

About this time, my phone rang. It was Ed from my office. “Matt, can you hop on a webex real quick?”

“Ed, can you give me 30 minutes, I caught an injured wild duck and I’m at the vet with her.”

“Not a rush Matt, but wow,  this is a new excuse.”  Both Ed and I got a chuckle. I hopped off the phone with Ed, and apologized to the doctor who understood that I was still trying to get work done while trying to save a duck.

“Mr. Trevathan”, she calmly explained,” I understand you’re doing a good thing for a wild animal. Pay what you can. I’ll reach out to a local foundation to get some help. Today, I want to get the duck stable. I’ve never done reconstruction this complex, but I think we could be successful here.”

“Does this mean she will need some rehab?”, I asked.

“Most likely. I can’t say for sure how long, but if all goes well, a couple weeks. Do you know if the ducks in your neighborhood migrate?”

I never really noticed if the neighborhood ducks tried to migrate, but this brought in two concerns. The first, were we going to miss the migration? Second, could she make it south without becoming a hunter’s feast? “I’m not sure.”, I said with some doubt in my voice.

“I’ll call you tomorrow after the operation and let you know if you can take her home.” At this point, I was good with the fact that the duck would rehab at my house if it made it through the operation. This would make my kids happy, and I had a large kennel to mew her in, so I wasn’t too worried about keeping her for a week or two. I thanked the doctor and the technicians and made my way back home.

Madame Qwackers at the vet.