Fuck a Duck

What the fuck are you lookin' at, pal?

The other day I was standing outside on my back deck grilling some kind of meat on the Bar-B-Q.  It was a beautiful evening.  Blue skies.  Nice breeze.  I love Bar-B-Qing.  I’m not sure what it is.  Maybe the mystical power of fire, some primal instinct left over from my Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon ancestors as they gathered around the campfire at night in silent awe of this strange beast dancing in the night.  Crackling.  Hypnotizing.  A caged beast.  The Bar-B-Q is the closest most of us get to that primordial weakness to the hypnotizing effects of fire.  There’s something that still holds some magic for us in those flames.  Even the staunchest literalist and hardened stoic will soften as they sit around a campfire and turn into a philosopher. 

As I stood outside brandishing my tongs I noticed two shapes in the sky at twelve o’clock.  They were far away, but closing in fast.  Two bogeys backdropped by a transparent, blue sky.  I breathed in deeply getting a lungful of Bar-B-Q smoke and smiled slightly as a cool breeze swept over my skin.   As the two birds got closer I could feel the power of The Fire.  I thought about my own secret desires to be able to fly and what it represented.  Freedom.  Adventure.  I thought wistfully about some of my favourite dreams where I was imbued with the power of flight, though upon waking I could never remember the exact combination of elements that were required for flight nor their precise measurements.  My most vivid flying dream was me in my old schoolyard able to sort of float up into the air.  In the dream it didn’t feel crazy that I could fly this way.  Concentrate.  Wait for a certain current of air.  Lean to just the right angle.  Let your feet leave the ground like they wanted.  It as always so precarious, though.  In my dreams.  As soon as I tried too hard, or thought about the mechanics of it or started to dream lucidly, I would start to fall back to the ground.  Not hard.  Just float down, like a hot air balloon with a hole in the side.  Gently. 

The birds were close enough now that I could tell that they were in fact ducks.  I opened the lid of the Bar-B-Q to check on the chicken or sausage or hamburgers or whatever I was cooking.  It didn’t matter.  It was all good.  Close the lid.  The ducks were closer now and it looked like they were circling around to make a landing in my yard.  My daughter would love that shit.  She loved looking at the ducks.  Any animals, really.  As this pair of ducks prepared for their final decent, however, something was amiss.  Their trajectories were all wrong for a backyard touchdown.  All of the sudden they swerved back in an S pattern over my backyard and drastically dropped altitude.  Jesus!  Before I knew what was happening I had a fucking duck flying straight toward my head, dive bombing me like some kamikaze pilot from WWII.  I barely had time to duck (now I know where the expression comes from, though) before they were both past me.  While dodging for my life all I caught was a glimpse but I saw one duck land on my roof and the one who had tried to take my head off touched down briefly on the roof of my neighbour’s deck and then flapped down to the lawn.  And then it occurred to me.

Ducks are  bunch of assholes.

As I thought back on all I knew about ducks the more I was sure of it.  Think about it.  Not only are ducks assholes, but they also rub our faces in it.  They flaunt it.  Think about it.  Ducks somehow get away with all kinds of things that ordinary citizens like you and me would get locked away for.  First of all, they walk around completely nude.  All the time.  In public.  An even when they do wear clothes -like, say, Donald for example- they’re always revealing.  All Donald Duck wears is a sailor hat and vest.  No fucking pants.  Like he’s flaunting that shit in our faces.  Now if I felt like walking around naked -even in my own backyard- I could actually face criminal charges.

And then they just go around eating shit off the ground.  Like it’s no big deal.  My daughter throws little pieces of bread in our front yard and watches the ducks come and eat it and then laughs hysterically.  But when I accidentally dropped my sucker on the floor of the men’s room at Wendy’s and picked it up before the Five Second Rule came into effect and put it back in my mouth after brushing some errant pubes off of it, this other guy totally gave me this disgusted look like I just bit the head off of a baby Panda or something.  How come it’s OK for ducks, huh buddy?  Would it be so funny if I ate scraps of bread off of your front yard because -damn it!- I get hungry too sometimes when I’m out and about and just a few nibbles of whole wheat would really keep me going.  When a duck does it it’s cute, but when I do it I’m suddenly some kind of social pariah?  Bullshit.  That’s discrimination pal.

And to top it all off, ducks don’t even get sick from eating disgusting shit from the ground.  I mean think about the last time you were in the ER. Were there any ducks there getting treatment for food poisoning, or bacterial infections or salmonella?  It makes me angry just thinking about it.

Pucker up, big boy.

And then there’s my two friends.  That was really just too fucking much.  I mean, imagine you’re a duck and you have the ability to fly anywhere you want.  Anywhere.  Soar with the eagles.  Head down to a nude beach to check out some (of the nice) titties.  Stop by the dumpster behind McDonald’s and score some free fries and Big Macs and shit.  Check out an Our Lady Peace concert without paying.  Or even if they wanted to stop by my place, my back yard isn’t small.  There’s lots of room back there to land and easily avoid me, who even as a full-grown human being probably takes up about one percent of the available surface area in my backyard that could be used as a viable landing strip.  And they come right at my fucking head.  That’s not just luck.  That’s intentional.  That’s premeditated.  Like Hey we could go down to the YMCA and check out the hotties in their skin-tight, black work out pants that climb right up their asses and show every nook and cranny, walk around all cute-like with our duck dicks hanging out with no repercussions whatsoever, but oh, look: let’s go dive bomb that dickhead who’s innocently Bar-B-Qing on his back deck just to fuck with him.  Shmuck.

What a piss off.  Those ducks scared the crap out of me and ruined an otherwise pleasant grilling experience.  And as much as I hated them, I was also jealous.  Ducks are like your asshole friend, the one who gets a free social pass and gets away with saying and doing shit that would get you slapped or arrested.  Ducks are like that one loud, drunken, foul-mouthed uncle who likewise gets away with murder and whose behaviour only earns him a chuckle and a shake of the head from fellow family members who brush his shit off with a knowing “Oh, that uncle So-And-So,” like he’s incorrigible, but if you were to comment on the fact that cousin Kyle is getting so fat he has to shop at maternity stores for his clothes (it’s not a moo-moo, it’s a fucking dress) or point out that Aunt Judy’s moustache is getting so thick you could swing from it like Tarzan you’d get a smack upside the head and threatened with disownment.  Ducks are like old people who can get away with anything because they’re old and their offensive/off-colour/slightly racist ramblings can be blamed on “that’s the way they were raised” plus it’s still socially unacceptable (for some reason) to beat up little old ladies, even when they’re totally asking for a shot to the kidneys.  That’s right, granny, I just put you on notice.

For whatever reason these groups get a social impunity that most of us can only dream of.  And while it might be nice to fantasize about being a duck, the truth is it’s probably not going to happen (unless that whole reincarnation thing is true).  But there is something we can do before this duck problem gets totally out of hand.  The next time you see some ducks in your yard or down by the old watering hole just stop for a second.  Get some bread.  Toss some over towards them.  Lure them in nice and close.  And then kick them in the fucking head.  And if it looks like they still haven’t learned their lesson get them in a headlock and then suplex those assholes.  Then bite their heads off.  If we don’t nip this shit in the bud soon we’ll have a full-fledged uprising on our hands.  And we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves because all the warning signs are there.  We mastered fire for god’s sake.  Certainly we can put these arrogant water fowl back in their place in the food chain.  Fucking ducks.