Don't Name the Ducks

by Wendy Dudley

  Besides, if you have livestock and manure, you have flies, a licorice all-sorts bag of horn flies, deer flies, stable flies, horseflies, cluster flies, and face flies. When the swarms turn into dense clouds, I buy mesh fly bonnets, snipping the tops off the ear pockets so they will fit over the mule's and donkeys' antennalike appendages. It's rather odd to watch them prance about with their faces covered like partying masqueraders, but it keeps the bugs out of their eyes and prevents them from rubbing their jaws raw on fence posts.

  Some guests, however, aren't as cavalier about such buzzing mayhem. Nancy was one such guest. She arrived for dinner after enjoying a drive in the foothills on a beautiful day in the fall, a time when the trees are trimmed in gold and the cooling air is bronzed with autumn light. It's also that time, just before winter lands, when the flies go dopey, bumping into things, flipping onto their backs while their feet pedal the air, and dropping dead for no apparent reason. I usually diagnose a bad case of concussion and dehydration.

  Toiling in the kitchen, Mom and I ignored the overhead buzzing and graveyard of dead flies lining the window ledges. But not Nancy.

  "What's with all these flies?" she asked. "I don't remember them being like this before."

  "Yeah, it's been a bad year," I said. "But it's no big deal. They'll disappear in a few weeks."

  It was obvious my insouciance did not rub off on Nancy. Chatting away, she kept waving and grabbing the air in front of her, whether there was a fly there or not. Her jerky movements were more distracting than the circling flies, but I said nothing, figuring things would improve once we sat down to eat. Wishful thinking on my part, because the opposite happened.

  Just as I slipped a spoon into my bowl of thick soup, a fly dove from the overhead light, plunging headfirst into the steaming broth. After a few short backstrokes, he died, his black body draped in creamed turkey. I looked over at Mom and began to laugh. I didn't dare look at Nancy. Picking the fly up by its wet wings, I stuck it on my side plate.

  "Oh well," I said. "That's one less to deal with."

  After that, Nancy continued to drop by for short visits, though not too many, and never at dinnertime.

  Our insect collection, however, amazed children. My nephew in particular entertained himself for hours, standing at a window with the fly swatter in his hand, poised to strike. This wasn't virtual warfare. It was the real thing, and much more practical than a zap-boombang computer game. Mind you, once he left, our

  The best weapon is truly a vacuum cleaner. In the fall, we don't bother putting it away, parking it instead next to the large sunlit windows where the flies play tic-tac-toe. Turn it on and within seconds the buzzing is muffled, as zillions of flies disappear down the tunnel into a dark cave cluttered with paper clips, dog and cat hair, caps off ballpoint pens, and stray twist-ties. Mom usually stuffs a wad of newspaper into the nozzle, so that the flies don't play survivor games, wending their way back from the cave and up the tunnel to daylight.

  Most country people don't talk about the flies, unless it's to predict incoming rain. When thunderheads start stacking up like massive buffalo humps, the flies start sticking to everything crawling along our arms, drinking from the corner of our eyes, and clinging to the mule's face. For some people, however, the pests are one more reason to pound in the For Sale sign. One couple, who were moving for a multitude of reasons, from the lack of services to the harrowing winter commute into the city, panicked every time potential buyers arrived on their front stoop. All they could do was hope and pray that the flies kept quiet during the walk-through. What the visitors didn't know is that moments before their arrival, the owners had fired up the vacuum cleaner, sucking the flies off an upstairs window that was impossible to see through because of the buzzing black cloud. Maybe flies should be included under the rules of real estate disclosure, or perhaps rural municipalities should stamp on land titles that all residences are under an existing flight path, because there's no such thing in the country as a No Fly Zone.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Curse of the Open Gate

  While driving down our road, I have been met by escaped bulls, cows, donkeys, and horses. Never far away is a frantic owner, trying to catch the animal before a disastrous collision.

  Leave a field gate open and you've got trouble on the run, merry hooves taking flight, exploring roadways, backyard gardens, and anything else off-limits.

  I could see the yawning gap between the fence post and the gate as I drove down the lane; the chain was unhooked, its links dangling loose. My stomach churned. The animals, usually loafing around their water tank and salt block, were nowhere in sight. I slammed my foot on the brake, the sudden stop spitting gravel across the grass. Throwing open the door, I launched myself into a quick jog, thinking—hoping—that they were grazing in the coolness of the valley. But who was I kidding? Stick around when there were nasturtiums to stomp and striped sunflower seeds to steal? Jumping back into the truck, I sped to the house, looking between the tree trunks for any sign of Crocus, Lucy, or the donkey. If my stomach twisted at seeing the open gate, it sank when I spotted a gaping hole in the back deck. Lucy must have clip-clopped her away across the rotting and sagging platform, then plunged through, leaving tufts of red hair snared in the sharp and jagged splinters.

  I hadn't run a sprint since high school, but I'm sure I broke a personal best as I raced through the fields, terrified I'd find her crippled with a broken leg. Scrambling up the woodland trail, I cursed the roots I stumbled over and the trees that blocked my view. If I was in Saskatchewan, they could run for three days and I'd still see them, but not here, where folded hills close like a curtain. Down the hill and through the heavy bog I went, stopping to catch my breath and to look for hoofprints or fresh manure, or anything to indicate I was on their trail. My mind took me places I didn't want to go. There was no fence on the other side of the creek, just miles of dense bush so thick I would never find them. If only I had tied a bell in Crocus's tail! I pushed on, traversing the hillside and then huffing up the last steep slope before our western boundary.

  There, trotting back and forth along the fenceline, was Crocus, her head bobbing over the strands as she chatted with the neighbour's gelding. Trailing behind, on four strong legs, was Lucy thank goodness! Sally the donkey, who knows no word for harried, was up to her nostrils in ripe grass. Now all I had to do was halter the mule and donkey and let Crocus follow. Halter? What halter? I couldn't believe it. In my hurry to find the animals, I had left the halters hanging in the barn. I trotted the half-mile back, then returned at a lazy jog.

  I don't know why I didn't halter only the donkey, knowing the other two would tag along. I guess it would have been too easy. Instead, I stumbled downhill, dragging along a pokey donkey on one side while trying to hold back a frisky mule on the other. Meanwhile, Crocus stayed behind, hiding in the overgrown bush. If my charges weren't playing tug-of-war with my arms, they were forging ahead like two plough horses, forcing me to lean back, my heeled boots scraping two furrows in the ground. If I lurched forward, my shins smashed into the pencil-sharp beaver stumps that littered the hillside.

  By the time we reached the last meadow, I was bruised and exhausted. Lucy and Sally, however, had settled, and I could see Crocus following the ridge like some war-party scout. I took a deep breath and began to think about a long, hot soak in a lavender bubble bath. I was half-submerged in the sweet-smelling water when my bubble burst. The mule crow-hopped, almost jerking my left shoulder out of its socket. Sally surged forward like an attacking battleship. High on the hill behind us was a herd of elk, at least a dozen of them headed our way, and fast. Exploding from the bush, Crocus, who hates elk, was charging towards us at a full gallop. Lucy, sensing danger and wanting to join her mother, reared and then jumped ahead, burning the rope across my palm. I let her go and watched her vanish across the field, her back leg kicking at the rope dragging behind her. I held onto the donkey as if she were a raft in a storm. When Sally and I arrived back at the b
arn, there was no sign of Lucy and Crocus. I retraced my steps, but I couldn't find them.

  In less than a hour it would be dark, and Lucy was loose with a dragging lead. If her halter caught on a sharp branch, she could break her jaw. Her rope could snag a windfall. I looked for hoofprints in the mud, but only the elk had left tracks. I shook a bucket of oats, hoping they could hear the sound that usually brought them running from the field. No such luck. One more look, I thought. I'll just check the barn once more before I phone the neighbours to let them know I had two runaways.

  I peeked through the open barn door, expecting to see empty stalls, but just to prove me wrong there was Crocus, picking at some loose stalks of hay, with Lucy at her side. Other than the splashes of mud stuck to their legs, they looked as if they'd been back for hours. I removed Lucy's lead and halter. Stroking her ears and face, I checked for any swelling between her knees and fetlocks. She had a small gash from where she'd gone through the deck, but otherwise she was fine.

  I shuffled back to the house, but not before checking all the gates. I still couldn't remember leaving that gate open. I looked back at Crocus, suspecting she was my Houdini. Lyle had warned me she had a way with latches and hooks, toying with them until they opened. If only she could talk! Knowing Crocus, she'd deny everything, blaming the entire fiasco on the donkey.

  Exhausted, I skipped dinner and went to bed, preferring my pillow to a warm soak. Lying there flipping through a magazine, I began to giggle at the evening's misadventures. Talk about the Keystone Cops! Then, outside my window, I heard a long nicker. It was Crocus. I laughed, and she nickered again. My little lock-picker, determined as always to have the last laugh!

  Chapter Fourteen

  Celebrity Fence Posts

  Before I moved to the country, Emmet sent me a book about a bull moose that courted a Hereford cow. I have since seen many moose grazing from cattle feeders, the tame and the wild living in harmony.

  "Well, Martha, what do you want for your birthday? You're turning forty, so I've got to get you something."

  "No you don't, Emmet," I said, hooking the phone under my ear and laughing at his calling me Martha, a nickname he'd plucked from Hollywood's dusty Westerns. I'd met Emmet Walsh, an actor, several years before on the set of Killer Image, a movie being shot in the Calgary area. We hit it off and have been friends ever since.

  Back in town for another film, Emmet was being his usual generous self, offering to buy me all sorts of goodies. But I couldn't think of a thing I wanted. I didn't need jewellery—earrings can be ripped from your lobes if they catch on sharp twigs or brush and our window ledges were already crammed with coloured bottles, sun-catchers, and china animals. I didn't have space for one more book, I didn't own a CD player, and I sure as heck wasn't going to let him buy me clothes.

  "Look, Emmet, seeing you again is good enough. You don't have to get me anything," I said.

  "Aw, come on now, there must be something you need."

  I thought for a long moment, the phone awkwardly cradled between my neck and shoulder as I doodled a donkey face on a message pad.

  "How about something for the ranch? You must need lots of stuff out there," he said.

  Emmet was onto something. Since my move to the country several months before, I had spent more money at the hardware store than I had at the grocery checkout. I'd love to meet the person who said country living was simple and cheap: the lucky sod obviously inherited everything, including the kitchen sink. Whatever savings I had for the little extras were disappearing faster. than a gopher with a coyote on its heels.

  Every week my list grew longer: salt blocks and salt block holders; mineral blocks; feeding pails; hooks for the barn; rings to tie the donkeys to; wire-cutters; barbed wire staples; nails, in every size they make; fly stickers; insect spray for the mule and donkeys; a hoof pick; curry combs; soft and hard brushes; hoof glue; more fly stickers; halters, in different sizes; more nails; rope; bits and bridles, in different sizes; a saddle; a saddle pad and blanket; wasp spray; ant dust; tick and warble powder; and a trunk to put it all in. And that was just for starters.

  Yes, there was something Emmet could get me, it being my fortieth and all.

  "Come to think of it, Emmet, I could do with some fence-building tools. I want to put in a new stretch of fence, but I haven't got what I need to do it."

  "Well, OK☺. So where do we go for something like that?" he asked.

  "There's a place in Calgary, not far from where you're staying," I said. "It's called the UFA."

  "The U-F-A?" he drawled, dragging each letter out, as if the high altitude was stealing his breath.

  "Yeah. It stands for the United Farmers of Alberta. It's a great place. They've got all sorts of neat stuff."

  "Then let's do it," he said.

  Going anywhere with M. Emmet Walsh is an adventure, especially in the back forty of Alberta, where people struggle to put a name to his familiar face and voice. I've never seen Emmet asked for a handshake or autograph, yet he's one of Hollywood's top character actors, having appeared in more than two hundred movies and television shows, including Ed, The X-Files, NYPD Blue, Bonanza, A Time To Kill, Blade Runner, Blood Simple, My Best Friend's Wedding, Brubaker, Slap Shot, Raising Arizona, Serpico, Reds, Ordinary People, and Midnight Cowboy. He plays good guys, bad guys, and everyone in between, his rumbling voice as distinct as the eye-patched pilot he played in Snow Dogs. He turns heads, but few in small-town Alberta can place him, and even if they could, fewer would plague him. /heir cheers are reserved for the volunteer fire crews and local rodeo stars, not for silver screen celebrities.

  For several months, there were rumours that Brad Pitt had a retreat down the road, but besides reporters trying to track down the truth, no one seemed to really care. Probing questions were met with a shrug and indifference. A comment would go something like this: "He might have a place around here, I don't really know. But you'll have to excuse me, because I've got a horse in this trailer that needs feeding." Not exactly what you'd call being star-struck.

  So walking into the UFA store, where high fashion means a quilted saddle blanket, horse shampoo, and hoof gloss, I could guarantee Emmet there would be no hiding paparazzi. If you want to buy things that will help you get dirty down on the farm, this is the place. Shelves are flush with engine oil, grease, motor batteries, overalls, vaccines, scythes, twine, and barn paint. Out back are stacks offence posts, planks, rails, railway ties, livestock gates, corral panels, storage tanks, stock tanks, holding chutes, hopper bins, and water troughs.

  "Hey, how about this? Got one of those?" asked Emmet, his hearty voice echoing down the aisles as he suggested every item we passed.

  "No thanks, Emmet. I've got bedding forks. And I've got pitchforks. And I don't think I need any more rakes."

  Instead, I grabbed a shovel with a square-ended blade for slicing through tough and tangled grass, a hand auger for digging postholes, and a heavy mallet for pounding the posts into stubborn clay.

  "This should do it," I said, as we made our way to the checkout counter, where again Emmet went unrecognized, even when he signed the credit card receipt.

  Since then, I have dug dozens of postholes with those tools, cursing every boulder I hit, every pool of water I strike and every blister I break as the rock-hard clay fights each turn of the auger. But with each bead of sweat, I think of Emmet, quietly thanking him for such practical presents. And when I'm done for the day, I wash the grime off my hands with a bar of French soap from a gift box he gave me several years later, determined, I'm sure, to bring some feminine fragrance to this outfit.

  As Emmet likes to say, his foray into the fencing business up here means he owns a piece of Alberta real estate "Yeah, I own land in Canada," he jokes. "A whole bunch of fence holes."

  Chapter Fifteen

  Don't Name the Ducks

  Native to South America, Muscovies are not as tolerant of cold, wet weather as other ducks. But they are a hardy bird, and I imagine that is why they surv
ived a frigid winter in my unheated outdoor pen.

  The distant white mound gleamed against a backdrop of frozen brown leaves, the sharp contrast as obvious as the white patch on the rear of an elk. What was it? It didn't move, and it was too bright to be snow. The unusual clump was down by the creek, where spring was beginning to melt muddied snowdrifts

  "What happened, of girl?" I asked Crocus, my fingers stroking her forelock while my other hand hugged her head close. "What went on here? I bet you know the whole story, don't you, my dark beauty?"

  I turned away from the mare's dark eyes, leaving her standing by the barn, its outer walls begging for the promised coat of fresh paint.

  "I'm going to check this out," I said to her over my shoulder as I began sliding down the hill, its surface slick with mud and ice. Another day for rubber boots. No wonder they call them farmers' moccasins, I mumbled, looking down at my knee-high green wellies. Purchased years ago in Scotland when I was hiking the rain-soaked moors, they were also handy footwear for the squishy gumbo that greets every farmyard around here come spring thaw.

  This was my first spring in the country, and I welcomed the rich aromas of wet earth and new growth. The afternoon sun was delicious, its golden fingers massaging the treetops and melting the last remnants of snow, but as I crossed the creek, the mysterious mound chilled the day's warmth.

  "It's her. I just know it's her," I said, feeling a lump in my throat. "After everything I did to get you through the winter, and now you're gone."

  At my feet were the remains of Lily, my Muscovy duck. Her quizzical look, her cheeky waddle, her beautiful ivory feathers—all gone. Just her orange bill and clumps of soft down remained, leftovers from a coyote's midday meal. I searched the sky and willows for Martha, my other duck. And then I spotted her feathered tombstone, marking the spot where she gasped her last breath. I looked up at Crocus, who cared less about the crime committed below her hilltop pasture.