by Eliza Blue, The Daily Yonder
July 12, 2024
A friend of mine recently took a whirlwind trip to Ireland. While walking through a park in Dublin, she met an Irish wolfhound named Seamus and fell immediately and deeply in love. Upon her return, she began researching the breed and has not stopped thinking about them since. The fact that my friend already has a dog and that Irish wolfhounds are uncommon, expensive and huge, is making her logical mind determine adding one to her family wouldn’t be a good idea.
But her heart doesn’t care, not even a little.
We currently have three teenage ducklings because after years of my mind and heart being at odds about whether or not to add ducks to the homestead, my heart finally won the argument. At least for long enough to get the ducklings from the bin at the farm supply store to my car. I proceeded to spend the whole drive home thinking, “What have I done?”
My heart and my mind are still duking it out as to whether this was a big mistake. My husband would say a resounding “Yes!” to this question, and because his voice often plays the role of common sense in my own mind, I take his answer seriously. Also, though I spend inordinate amounts of time with them, the ducklings are still very wary of me, do not under any circumstances want me to pick them up, and while I am acceptable if I have food, am otherwise only barely tolerable.
Consequently, I’m concerned about ever letting them out of the pen, because I think they might flee and never come back. Finally, there is the amount of poop ducks generate, which of course I had read and heard about, but still couldn’t comprehend until I was living with it. It is truly and daily astonishing how much these creatures poop! Keeping their living area clean is a time-consuming job, and I already have a lot of chores.
So those are all the reasons my head is saying: “Big mistake!” But every morning, it is their tiny quacks outside the open window that wake me, and I look forward to opening the door to their duck house as my first job. My head thinks I don’t want the responsibility, but my heart doesn’t mind a bit.
Meanwhile, I asked my friend what drew her to Seamus in the first place, and she said his nobility and his kind, stoic presence. She’s going through a lot right now, and despite what her mind is telling her about the difficulties inherent in an Irish wolfhound companion, a calm, gentle giant would be a huge comfort as she faces the challenges ahead. So her heart and her head, though at odds, are both right.
The truth is, if I had unlimited funds, I would be digging a hole to make these ducks an inground pool. I would build them a splash pad and a two-story duck palace. And beside the pool and palace, I’d put a comfy bench so I could hang out there all the time, hopefully inconspicuously.
Yes, ducks are a lot of work, and I don’t need more work, but they are also so joyful. They could just drink their water, use a little for bathing, and leave it at that, but instead every encounter with water becomes an impassioned dance, water flung everywhere, the resulting mud just as much a pleasure to them, and their pleasure is a pleasure to observe. My heart is thankful for the help getting my head to remember that most of joy comes simply from enjoying yourself. Having to share a body with my head can be a pretty thankless job, I imagine.
But I also know this isn’t just about me. We have friends who also acquired ducklings this spring, and they have a little creek that runs beside their barnyard. Every morning I wonder, is the kinder thing to take our ducks to live at our friends’ in duck paradise? And that is a question neither my head nor my heart is ready to answer yet.
Eliza Blue lives on a ranch in northwest South Dakota. She’s a musician, mom, author, and shepherd. She is featured in episode two of “Rural Food Traditions,” part of the Daily Yonder’s Rural Remix podcast, sharing her experiences with baking sourdough bread.
This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
