Duck

This one time, I caught a duck. I’ve no idea why I wanted to catch this duck – I’d certainly never had the urge before. Never in my life had I looked at a duck and thought, ‘yes. This is something that I would like to possess. I must have it.’

And to be honest, that’s not what I was thinking back then, either. It wasn’t a question of have and have-not, of my taking a duck for my own. That wasn’t the point. The point was to catch it, to get the better of it, to lure it from a state of happy idle freedom to a state of being caught. By me. All me. I’d never had such thoughts before, and I never have since, but on that one particular day – the instant I saw that smug little mallard waddling about and waving his arse at me as he ducked under the filthy water of the allotment pond – I was possessed by this all-encompassing, fierce, burning need to catch that fucking duck. It was almost scary it was so intense, let me tell you!

Looking at it objectively, there was nothing special about this duck. No special markings, no outrageous behavior, nothing to distinguish it from any other duck. It could have been any old duck, really; this just happened to be the duck I decided upon. The instant I saw it I just knew that it had to be caught, there was no question about that. Why I fixated on that specific duck is still a mystery to me.

I thought long and hard about how to catch this duck. I immediately discounted the notion of just chasing it. Sure, I was pretty confident that I was faster than a duck, but such an activity would be terribly undignified. Plus, what if it retreated to the water? What if it flew away? I may run faster than a duck waddles, but I don’t have wings. I can’t flap and soar away at a moment’s notice, unlike some creatures. So chasing was out.

Perhaps I could set a trap? I pondered this for a while. I thought about different types of cages and bait and lures. But I have to confess, despite this sudden obsession with this particular duck, I was pretty ignorant about ducks in general. For one thing, I had no real concrete notion of what ducks eat. Fish? Plants? They’re always bobbing under the water to fetch something, but I’ve never even thought about what that something was. I suppose bread was always a popular choice, but I didn’t have any bread on me. Ditto for cages and duck lures. This passion had come over me so suddenly, I’d had no time to prepare. So, for lack of preparation, traps were out.

It was really a conundrum, let me tell you. I sat on the old bench for a good hour, fuming and staring at this fucking duck, trying to figure out how I was going to catch the thing. I sat there so focused, so intent, that everything else ceased to exist. My world narrowed and honed in on that duck. It was just me and that duck alone in our own little universe. I’ve no idea how long I sat there, alone with the duck, but it felt like years.

When you’re alone in the universe with a single other creature for years at a time, you develop a kind of sympathy. A kind of understanding. After a while I felt like I understood that little duck better than I could ever understand anything or anyone else. I could know no lover, no child, no human being as completely and thoroughly as I knew that duck. And I could tell, the reverse was true. I felt that duck examine my very soul. It knew my every secret, my every hope and fear and shame. It terrified and elated me, to be known so utterly.

Centuries later, the world started to come back to me. There was the allotment and the flats and the housing projects. Sky, clouds, sun. Plants and people. And all the other little ducks.

I looked at the duck. It looked back at me, and slowly waddled over. Its fat little body rocked back and forth as it padded over and stopped at my feet. My breath caught in my throat, and tears welled in my eyes. I reached down, taking its feathered form gently in my hands, and picked it up. I cradled it to my chest, tears streaming down my cheeks. It gave a quiet honk and ruffled its tail. I smiled.

“Gotcha.”

***

I’ve never caught a duck since. Never really felt the need. That’s the thing – I don’t even particularly like ducks. I’ll pass them by at the pond and glance over, but to me they’re nothing special. For whatever reason I just had this burning obsession with one duck, but only one! Maybe it wasn’t even about the duck.

Since then my life has been… ordinary. Utterly ordinary. I do the same things I always did, see the same people, eat the same food. My feelings about ducks certainly haven’t changed in any way. My outlook on life is no different. If there’s a lesson to be learned from my experience, I haven’t the foggiest idea what it’s supposed to be. One of these days I’d like to know, and I’ve been keeping my eyes and ears open, trying just a little harder to notice the everyday things. It’d be nice to understand, but I’m not sure that I ever will.

Maybe that’s the point. 

It was crime at the time, but the laws, we changed 'em