Bob Tarte

by Enslaved by Ducks

  “I don’t talk like that,” I countered.

  “You’ve been yodeling like that all day. ‘How’s the goosey doing? Yo-de-lay-de-hoo!’”

  “I never yodeled,” I laughed in embarrassment.

  “My God.” He folded up the stepladder and stared at me. “I just noticed what’s wrong with you. You’re almost happy, aren’t you?”

  “No.”

  “You are. For all the years I’ve known you, you never once mentioned the animal kingdom. But here you are with your little goosey friends and a big moronic smile on your face. Either that, or it’s the Zoloft.”

  “It’s because you’re about to go home.”

  After Bill left, I let the ducks and geese out of their pen and flopped down on a flat section of ground near the redbud tree. I spread my fingers in the warm grass and flicked an ant off my thumb as bumblebees gathered in the spirea bush behind me. Daphne, Chloe, and Maxine wandered only as far as an exquisite patch of mud just on the other side of the pen door, while the two African geese and the male Khaki Campbells chatted excitedly as they ambled up the hill. A fat white cloud released the sun, flooding the back of my eyelids with a vibrant raspberry light. Cars whooshed past the house with their radios playing. The happy grunts of the geese grew close. Though they had the entire yard to graze, they were pecking at the ground with the Khakis a few feet from my legs.

  My limbs and brain felt heavy. Sleep nibbled at me—at least I thought it was sleep until I felt a distinct pecking on my shoe. Liza and Hailey were taking turns playing with my laces, while one of the male Khakis—we couldn’t tell Trevor and Stewart apart—urged them on with whispery quacks. I sat up slowly, but still apparently too fast for Hailey, who stumbled away with a wing-flap. Liza, identifiable by the faint yellow ring around her eyes, held her ground. When I shifted to a cross-legged position, she honked softly and padded closer until her abdomen rested against my calf and she was almost sitting in my lap. I showed her my hand and moved it behind her head to stroke the soft feathers of her neck while she stared at me with an unfathomable eye. She stretched her neck, grabbed a shirt button, and pulled it. On her second try, she had the button and a clump of fabric in her beak. Hailey leaned forward to nip at my shirt pocket. The two boys were showing untoward interest in my pant cuff. It was too much of a good thing. After a seeming eternity outdoors, I stood up and walked through a volley of disappointed honks back into the house to wash Liza’s muddy lipstick off my shirt before Linda could discover it and jump to any conclusions.

  CHAPTER 9

  Creatures of Habit

  People say you can get used to anything. Habits are habits, and repetition makes the most extraordinary events eventually seem commonplace. Back when Binky ran our lives, I learned not to bat an eye whenever I stumbled into our dining room while Linda was putting the bunny to bed. For most rabbit owners, making sure the pet has fresh food and water is sufficient. But Linda went the extra mile by treating Binky to a musical recital and me to the spectacle of my wife on hands and knees in the dining room with her head thrust through the door of the bunny’s cage while singing a lullaby she had composed.

  ’Cause he’s the bunny,

  The very best bunny,

  He’s the bunny for

  You and me.

  As she warbled the song, whose soaring melody suggested a hymn, Linda would pet Binky on the head while attempting to keep him from kicking away the pink hand towel she had draped across his back. One or two refrains of “The Very Best Bunny” typically provided all the happiness Binky could handle. Any more and he might bolt for the open door.

  Pocket parrot Ollie’s bedtime ritual was even more remarkable. Linda would hide Ollie inside a knitted pink tam-o’-shanter she called his “night-night hat.” Clutching one end of the tam, she would swing it back and forth in the manner of a pendulum while scat singing a medley of American standards that usually included “Camptown Races” and “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” Eager to see the performance as well as hear it, Ollie would attempt to crawl out of the tam. Once his head popped into view, Linda would snug the hat around his neck and flip him upside down in her lap. Instead of responding with his usual bad temper, he greeted this with excited chirps whose intensity increased as Linda stroked his head with a finger, carefully avoiding his snapping beak.

  Neither wife nor parrot was shy about conducting this ritual in front of awestruck company. Linda once even tried instructing our pet-sitter Rhonda in the finer points of the complex ceremony, but our helper shook her head at the idea of mastering the “night-night hat” without months of study.

  “How did you ever think this up?” asked a bewildered Rhonda. “How did he get in the hat in the first place?”

  Like an ancient traditional dance whose movements have lost their meaning over the centuries, the “night-night hat” has origins that are cloaked in mystery. All we know for certain is that in the not-so-distant past, when Ollie squawked extensively while Linda worked in the kitchen, she occasionally popped him into the pocket of her apron, both quieting the bird and forcing him to live up to the epithet of pocket parrot. Depositing him inside the tam presumably evolved from there, but behavioral anthropologists disagree on the precise mechanism of the transition.

  Every three months I endured a less obscure ritual of my own. In order to keep from plunging into the pocket of neurosis that could open up beneath my feet, anywhere and at any time—such as in the living room after witnessing Ollie’s bedtime preparations—I was obliged to visit my psychiatrist, Dr. Glaser, for quarterly updates of my Zoloft prescription. Although the Zoloft had successfully lowered my general feeling of unease, major events, such as any kind of deadline at work or an unintended slight delivered by a stranger, could still smite me with depression and anxiety, especially when the complexity of caring for two incompatible cats, two incompatible rabbits, two naughty parrots, three parakeets, a canary, a dove, five ducks, and a pair of geese wore me out. Since each fifteen-minute session with Dr. Glaser boiled down to his writing out my scrip while I pondered his Johnny Castaway screen saver, a visit every six months would have sufficed. But the office manager insisted that their computer was incapable of scheduling appointments at greater than three-month intervals. I wasn’t sure if this meant that I enjoyed better mental health than the practice’s other patients, exercised better sales resistance, or if all of us had fallen prey to the same bogus scheduling excuse.

  A late-winter meeting with Dr. Glaser that would later turn out to be my last began like every other visit. I wandered around a waiting room whose extravagant spaciousness must have discouraged the treatment of agoraphobics. The problem wasn’t finding a place to sit, it was choosing between numerous furniture groupings while wondering if concealed observers were evaluating my choice. Imagine a yawning room the size of an aircraft hanger and stock it with earth-toned couches, loveseats, overstuffed chairs, conference chairs, library tables, coffee tables, end tables, occasional tables, vegetables, table lamps, floor lamps, and accent lighting to form a dozen separate enclaves. Block the windows with opaque curtains, then sprinkle the room with a sparse population of patients pretending we just happened to be in the neighborhood and stopped by to peruse the magazines.

  Dr. Glaser drifted in through a door on the distant horizon as I was absorbing an article in Fitness magazine on the ten best ways to sculpt my lower body, a subject near and dear to my heart. He wore a bronze-colored suit with a metallic sheen that complemented his therapeutic approach. His arms hung heavily at his sides, inviting me to forego shaking his hand as he greeted me with a brief smile and a warm over-the-forehead stare. Once I had followed him into his nondescript office and seated myself on the inevitable leather couch, he asked me the usual opening question, “Are you still taking the Zoloft?” His inflection suggested that Zoloft was my friend.

  “Yes, I am,” I answered confidently. Meanwhile, Johnny Castaway had just gotten bonked on the head by a coconut that had dropped from the sole t
ree on his island, rendering him unconscious during the passage of a cruise ship that might have rescued him.

  “Is the Zoloft still effective?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you experiencing any anxiety or depression while taking the Zoloft?”

  “Yes, a little of each. But nothing too debilitating.” I did not elaborate upon the pressures of maintaining and losing pets, nor did I mention the “night-night hat,” fearing he might enter the information in his database. I hated the thought of one day chancing upon an article in Psychology Today about psychiatric patient “Robert,” who suffered dangerous delusions about headgear-wearing birds.

  “Would you like to increase the dosage of your Zoloft?” he asked with weary encouragement.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Shall I write you a prescription for the same dosage of Zoloft that you are currently taking?”

  I nodded. I entertained a thought. Any thought was entertaining under the circumstances. “That’s fine. But since we have a couple of minutes, I was wondering if I could ask you a question. About dreams,” I added, expecting a light bulb to flash behind his eyes. Surely dreams were the filet mignon of a psychiatrist’s sustenance, though Dr. Glaser’s manner remained politely disinterested.

  “I’ll try to answer your question about dreams.”

  “Here’s what I don’t understand. Dreams can conceivably take a person anywhere. Anything is possible in dreams. I could visit different planets as easily as walking out a door. But all of the settings in my dreams are, well, incredibly ordinary. They take place at work, or in my parent’s house, or garage, or in apartments I used to live in, or in my grandmother’s old house. The settings repeat so relentlessly, I could probably list them on half a sheet of paper and still have enough space left over to write a grocery list. I’m just wondering if you might have any ideas why this might be so. The events in my dreams are often complicated, but the settings never are.”

  Dr. Glaser thought a moment, then surprised me with his answer. “Would you describe yourself as a person who values consistency in your life?” I had to agree that I would. “Then perhaps the regularity of setting is a choice that you have imposed on your dreams, indicating that you function best with routines and habits and don’t necessarily adapt well to change.”

  His words hit me with a powerful insight about pet ownership. Rather than blaming our animals for adding complexity to my life, perhaps I should thank them for simplifying it. After all, they helped reduce the potentially unlimited possibilities of existence to a series of tedious and predictable daily routines. Nothing could suit the temperament of a timid man better. Instead of laying ambitious plans for the future or even building up a healthy clientele for my freelance writing business, I could pack each day to the brim directing ducks in and out of their pens, separating fighting rabbits, and keeping parrot-seed dishes filled. The notion that something other than folly might lie behind my acquisition of nearly countless pets brought me a tingle of joy. I overflowed with gratitude toward Dr. Glaser.

  “Thank you for your help,” I told him when my fifteen minutes had expired. I felt a little guilty for having underestimated his psychological expertise simply because his couch-side manner wasn’t up to snuff. After he had walked me to the reception area, I turned to him and said, “See you in three months.”

  “Good-bye,” he replied, extending his right hand. At first I thought he wanted me to shake it, but he passed me a sealed envelope, spun around, and retreated down the corridor. Out in my car, with the heater blowing and snow covering my windshield, I read a letter informing me that Dr. Glaser was leaving his practice at Psychiatric Professionals to accept a new position as director of a state mental health facility for the criminally insane in southern Indiana. The announcement concluded with the uplifting statement, “I have benefited from my association with each of you and assure you that your records will be transferred to another psychiatric-care physician in time for your next appointment.” Shaken by this unexpected intimacy, I wiped away a tear as I guided my car through the gleaming office park. Every faux marble façade, each ramrod-straight, steel-jacket light pole reminded me that I had lost a consummate mental health professional who had taught me the meaning of neurosis.

  IF ANYONE BESIDE myself flourished in an environment where habits and routines were deeply ingrained, it was Stanley Sue. Far from remaining the shrinking violet of her first years with us, though, Stanley Sue expanded the range of her introverted nature by exploring the kitchen drawers on the opposite side of the room. If I foolishly neglected to drape a tablecloth over the drawer handles, Stanley took the opportunity to climb from one drawer to the next until, from her perch on the hardware summit, she somehow managed to pry open the topmost drawer. Canning-jar rims, measuring spoons, and plastic cat food lids ended up imprinted with beak marks and strewn across the linoleum. On one outing she nibbled the wooden handle of one of Linda’s favorite knives down to the shank.

  When Stanley Sue wasn’t scaling drawer handles, she stalked the tops of the bunny cages, hoping for a clear shot at pecking Bertie or Rollo through the bars. But the dining room woodwork was more at risk than the rabbits. Her love of chewing compelled me to slide a knee-high plywood board between the backs of the bunny cages and the picture window, hoping it would keep her from reaching the windowsill.

  But Stanley’s routine destruction of household objects wasn’t so easily derailed. Seated on the edge of the board, she would gnaw a section of plywood until she had eaten away an access to the presumably sweeter material of the sill. Back before compact discs had completely phased out LPs, I regularly received albums in the mail to review for my magazine column. Folding their cardboard mailers into various shapes, I wedged them between the cages and plywood board and between the plywood board and the window as a further distraction from her intractable beavering of the woodwork. These also became grist for the mill. If we waited too long to clean up after her, I might fill two kitchen trashbags with Stanley-generated wood shavings and shredded cardboard that she had deposited in a small space between Bertie’s cage and a well-chewed cabinet that held a radio with a dangerously chewed cord.

  Despite her bad habits, Stanley Sue’s intelligence and good nature kept me from staying angry with her for long. In the morning she would dog my feet in the kitchen, scuttling across the linoleum as I retrieved dry kibbles from the cupboard and canned cat food from the fridge to dump into dishes on the countertop. Fearing I was bent on returning her to her cage, she would balk if I attempted to pick her up. As long as I assured her I simply wanted to take her “upstairs to see kitty,” she eagerly hopped onto my hand and rode along. For a few weeks she even seemed poised to learn to “poop” on cue if I said that magic word while holding her above Penny’s litter box, but my timing was frequently as poor as hers, and I gave up on it.

  She shocked me one Sunday at breakfast when I told her, “Better get on top of your cage if you want your juice.” She trotted across the floor, clambered up her cage, and voiced the excited chuck note that meant she expected a treat. On a whim I once corrected her, “Not on your cage, in your cage.” She paused inches from the cage top, turned around, and ducked inside. I soon realized that she understood far more than she preferred to let on, obeying most commands only if they resulted in a reward or avoided an unwanted confrontation.

  Stanley Sue formed mental connections that seemed to illustrate she was capable of abstract thought. My first inkling of this came when she mocked me with a kissing sound when I lavished praise on another pet. She demonstrated a similar leap in logic after mastering an obnoxiously accurate imitation of our squeaky ovenbroiler door and erupting with the sound as soon as Linda’s fingers touched the broiler-door handle. Once she lost interest in this stunt, she started making the same squeak when we opened the door to the basement. Her linkage of two completely different-looking but functionally similar objects implied that she understood the concept of a door.

  Along w
ith the blossoming of Stanley Sue’s personality came a deepening bond between us. During dinner, once I had stopped feeding her long enough to try to eat from my own plate, she often left her cage top to climb the horizontal crosspieces of my chair legs and park herself under my seat. Reaching down to tweak her beak, I no longer feared a bite, at least no more often than the owner of an exuberant cat would fear a nip. If she didn’t want to be touched, she turned her head away. If I insisted on picking her up when she was adamantly opposed to it, on rare occasions she would strike me with her beak rather than bite. The solution was respecting her dignity and asking her to do on her own what she would not do with my help. So, if she was happily employed reaching through the bars of Rollo’s cage struggling to overturn his water dish, and profoundly resented stepping onto my hand to go back to her cage, I didn’t press the matter. Instead I would tell her, “If you won’t step up, you have to go into your cage on your own,” and bribe her with juice if she still resisted. She would invariably comply. While my approach flew in the face of parrot behavioralists who stress that the “step up” command must be obeyed at all times, the end result was what mattered to me.

  Stanley Sue’s affection toward me was tempered by her jealousy of other birds. Even if she was occupied with an ambitious woodwork-improvement project, I only had to float a few sweet syllables toward Howard the ring-necked dove to drive her to a fast march across the floor, a climb up the side of her cage, and Quasimodo-like activity with her bell. But Stanley Sue’s eyes turned greenest whenever I paid attention to Ollie, who enjoyed chirping, whistling, and chattering in response to a happy tone of voice. He especially savored the cryptic phrase, “Can you say?” which was a holdover from my early attempts to teach him to talk. “Can you say, ‘Pretty boy’?” I would ask him, back in the days before our menagerie exploded. “Can you say, ‘I’m a bitey little bird’?” While few English words ever entered his vocabulary, asking him, “Can you say?” always elicited delighted peals, which infuriated Stanley Sue, who would squawk and flap her wings as if she were going to swoop down upon the interloper. She only acted out her jealousy if I was sitting on a chair scratching her head as Linda concluded the ritual of the “night-night hat” by presenting Ollie to me with the request, “Say goodnight to Poppy.” If my goodnight lasted longer than a couple of clipped words, Stanley Sue would pinch my leg with her beak.