Bob Tarte

by Enslaved by Ducks

  “You can call an owl pretty easily, you know,” Jason told us over dinner that evening. He was a college student who had worked for us cleaning up our duck pen a couple of times, and because of his interest in birds, we had invited him and his girlfriend over for a meal.

  “How do you call them?” I asked.

  “Jason does great owl impressions,” said his girlfriend, Kathie, who preferred exotic snakes to birds. When Jason had first met her in the dorm, a rough green snake was peeking through her hair.

  “Do the screech owl,” she said.

  He made a warbling whistling sound that may or not have been a perfect rendition of an owl that I had never heard before in our woods, though Jason insisted that we lived in prime screech-owl habitat.

  “Do you do a barred owl?” I asked, envisioning a nightclub career for Jason.

  Jason took a preparatory breath, flicked his eyes, and paused. Too embarrassed to turn his mimicry into a medley, he suggested instead, “You can also use a recording of an owl’s call. They’re very curious, and they’ll come to investigate.”

  My own pathetic rendition of the barred owl’s call a few nights later resembled a six-year-old boy imitating a trombone, and the sole answering hoot was unmistakably derisive. The following week, I was outside after dark bringing in our bird feeder to keep it from raccoons, when an owl not more than one hundred feet away inquired about my dinner. “Who cooks for you?” it demanded. “Who cooks for you all?”

  Darting upstairs, I returned with a flashlight, a pair of binoculars, and a boom box with a tape of a barred owl call. Out on the back deck, I cranked up the volume and let a few repetitions rip into the night. The swamp below our back fence was swollen with water from recent rains and added an unsettling metallic echo to the calls. The owl didn’t reply. I rolled the tape again. Across the swamp, beyond our barn, and within a chain length of the river, our neighbor’s chocolate brown Labrador retriever responded with an explosive volley of barks. Then from somewhere in our yard, somewhere close, the barred owl’s throaty, sliding call came back to me, a cross between a fanfare played on a muted trumpet and an animal growl that prickled the nape of my neck.

  “Linda! Linda!” I ran upstairs, summoning her with a hoarse whisper. “There’s an owl outside. He’s talking to my tape.” She looked doubtful. On previous occasions when I had dragged her outdoors, a glorious song would invariably sputter to a halt the moment her feet crossed the threshold. This time, I played the tape again, and the owl astonished me by answering immediately. The final, drawn-out syllable of his call descended in an icy vibrato that mimicked the quavering “hoo” of a classic Hollywood ghost.

  Linda turned to me with wide eyes. “He’s right in the yard,” she whispered, enunciating every word.

  “I think he’s in the walnut tree,” I said. Switching on the flashlight, I swept its beam up a tree about fifty feet away. A weak circle of light caught an owl perched on a low branch with his flat face turned directly toward us. Linda kept the barred owl illuminated as I peered at him through binoculars, then I held the light again and let Linda gape at him. The intensity of his unblinking stare unnerved me. It was as if the bird were training twin lasers on me whose wattage dwarfed the candlepower of my feeble flashlight. I felt the pressure of his eyes even as I leaned down and fumbled with the tape recorder controls.

  “Who cooks for you?” the boom box demanded.

  Hearing another owl within pouncing distance, he leaped off the branch to soar directly at me, zooming between the house and the milk house with his five-foot wingspan not five feet above my head before circling back into the yard, landing in another tree, and hooting his response. His approach had been so quick and so unexpected, I didn’t even have a chance to curl up into a cowardly ball. For only the second or third time in my life, I experienced profound gratitude that I hadn’t been born a field mouse.

  “He thinks you’re his girlfriend,” Linda lamented. “The poor guy.“

  “Or a rival,” I countered, puffing out my chest. But the truth was that my initial elation over luring him into the yard had soured into embarrassment. It’s one thing when a black-capped chickadee hops from the pine tree to our bird feeder to get a close look at the idiot who is mangling his simple, two-note song. It’s quite another bothering a solitary predator whose life depends upon determining if another owl has invaded its territory and whether that invader is a prospective mate or a probable foe. What must our barred owl think, I wondered, to follow the call of a fellow owl to its source only to find a guilt-stricken skinny guy and his disapproving wife? Summoning such a formidable creature merely to see if it could be done was akin to uncorking a bottle and disturbing the thousand-year sleep of a fierce genie and then telling him, Oh, never mind, go back to bed. Parrots don’t forget when they’ve been teased. They wait months for just the right moment to take revenge upon their tormentor. I doubted if an owl would be any more generous. You underestimate the strength and patience of a bird at your peril. I learned this when the shy duck Chloe bit my arm bloody defending her nest and again when Hector kept coming at me in a savage hissy fit no matter how many times I flung him from me. An annoyed barred owl could easily tear my clothes and shred my flesh with a few twitches of his knife-sharp beak and talons. Cold, hard logic told me this would never happen. More likely he would wield his influence with supernatural forces to teach me a lesson instead.

  “That’s the last time I’m ever doing this,” I vowed loudly enough for the owl to hear, as I unplugged the tape recorder and wrapped the cord around my wrist. “Sorry,” I hollered to the owl. But it was too late. The damage had been done, and I prickled with unease that I would pay for playing tricks on an emissary of the unseen world.

  The next morning, in a haze of sunshine, Linda flung open the door to the girl ducks’ pen. Ducks Maxine, Chloe, Clara, Marybelle, and Gwelda trotted out into the yard with goose Hailey bringing up the rear. But goose Liza stayed behind, suddenly unable to walk or even stand.

  For two weeks, Liza had been waddling with a limp, but we hadn’t thought it was anything more serious than a pulled muscle. The green-headed mallard–Khaki Campbell males had taken advantage of her condition by chasing her around the girls’ side of the pen until they had flattened her into a corner or she had retreated into a doghouse.

  Since Liza’s mobility problem hadn’t descended on her all at once, like Chloe’s broken leg had, we didn’t think a traumatic injury had occurred. Dr. Carlotti agreed, but that was all that he could say for certain. Although he kept a pair of picturesque horses in a tidy corral in back of his country practice, he was by no means a country vet. He mainly treated dogs and cats, and his experience with poultry was limited.

  “If I had to guess, I would say that it’s a temporary nerve problem,” he sighed. “If she’s been sitting on eggs like you said, it’s possible that one or more eggs in her oviduct have been pressing against a nerve, temporarily paralyzing her leg. I don’t see any sign of injury. Let her rest, and if I’m right, she should be walking in a couple of days.”

  This hypothesis seemed reasonable and reassuring. After venturing a few steps into our woods, I shouted my thanks to the now invisible owl for visiting nothing worse than a scare on us. Maybe mimicking a mate was equivalent to a parking infraction rather than a felony in the owl behavioral code, I reasoned. But when four days passed without Liza showing any improvement, we grew concerned enough to set up an appointment with the knowledgeable Dr. Hedley.

  I had bought a beagle-size pet carrier that we often used for duck and rabbit duties, and it sat on the floor beside my chair in Dr. Hedley’s crowded waiting room. Hoping to reduce the stress on Liza, who wasn’t accustomed to being folded up and shoved into a plastic box, I had draped a towel over the front grate. The shrouding succeeded in piquing the curiosity of a dachshund on a long leash. “What kind of dog do you have in there?” asked the woman on the far end of the leash, just as her dachshund poked his snout behind the towel and Liza respon
ded with a startled honk. I grinned uneasily, then stared intently at the floor tile pattern as a pungent scent resembling tincture of highly concentrated grass clippings seasoned with a dash of boiled cabbage wafted up from Liza’s carrying case. A man seated across from me with a kitten in a cardboard box on his lap coughed. The kitten coughed, too. My mind grappled in the dark for the barest beginnings of an explanation, and in despair utterly abandoned the attempt.

  The receptionist finally banished us to an examination room. I had expected Dr. Hedley’s appearance to cheer me, but he wasn’t himself when he walked in. His usual outgoing personality had been turned inside out. He gestured at me as one might nod vaguely to an unfamiliar silhouette in the dark and he mumbled an introduction to the college-age man at his side. “This is Mr. Dalton. He’s a veterinary school student who is making the rounds with me today. You don’t mind if he observes us?” he asked.

  I wanted to tell him that if he needed something to observe, he should have witnessed the scene in the waiting room, but instead I murmured a quick, “That’s fine.”

  Dr. Hedley’s detached attitude puzzled me. But after having taken too many animals to too many veterinarians on too many occasions, I’ve learned not to judge the mood of a vet on any given visit too harshly. He might have lost an animal in surgery that morning, or he might have been forced to euthanize a client’s beloved pet when nothing else could be done. Maybe Mr. Dalton depressed him. Whatever had happened to Dr. Hedley earlier, his robustness had evaporated along with his enthusiasm for getting to the bottom of a problem. The mysterious burden he was carrying increased as he peered sadly at Liza, pressed a stethoscope against her chest, and told young Dalton in a teacher’s voice, “We have here a very sick little goose. Do you see how her bill opens and closes as she struggles to breathe?”

  The observation took me by surprise. “I hadn’t noticed that,” I said. “I thought she just had something wrong with her leg.”

  “How has her appetite been?”

  “I don’t know. I assumed it was okay. She has her own bowl of food in her pen.”

  “She’s very weak.” Directing his attention back to the student, he explained. “She’s suffering from pneumonia. They don’t last long in this condition.” His expression was grave, but he shaped his lips into a calming smile and told me, “I’ll give you an antibiotic to take home with you. It might possibly help, and it certainly won’t do her any harm.”

  Liza hadn’t comprehended the judgment against her and felt no worse after Dr. Hedley’s virtual death sentence had been issued than before. I felt miserable, though. She was a wonderful goose, and I couldn’t imagine walking out into our yard without her and Hailey blistering my ears with their happy greeting.

  Three days of giving Liza antibiotics did no discernible good. I gained little from the experience, either, other than the adventure of prying open a goose’s beak and finessing a syringe between her serrated mandibles without losing a finger in the process. Thankfully, Liza took the abuse graciously.

  Linda suggested we immediately get a second opinion from Dr. Fuller, the veterinarian who had told us that Stanley was actually Stanley Sue. In the examination room, Dr. Fuller beamed at the sight of his first goose patient. Liza sat placidly on the table with her head bent sleepily toward the blue towel that I had arranged beneath her into a nest. “She’s beautiful,” he told me, stroking her neck. “What seems to be the trouble here?” he asked Liza. “Aren’t we feeling well?”

  Translating and elaborating upon Liza’s honk, I told him the full story of her illness, from the first sign of her limp through her inability to walk and Dr. Hedley’s diagnosis of pneumonia. I omitted my encounter with the owl, fearing that the sordid details might muddy his scientifically trained mind. Dr. Fuller took it all in with brisk nods of his head. Dr. Fuller was tall, rather lanky, and projected an enthusiasm worthy of an Edwardian stage actor in a musical revue. He exuded buckets of intelligence, topped a personable sense of humor with a fluttery laugh, and was an absolute stickler for process. The gears began whirring as soon as he beamed a light into Liza’s eyes and listened to her breathing.

  “You hear that?” he asked me, laying down his stethoscope. “There it is again. You can hear a definite click whenever she breathes. Dr. Hedley was certainly correct prescribing Baytril for pneumonia, but I don’t think we have that here. From her labored breathing and weakened condition, I suspect she’s suffering from aspergillosis. It’s common among waterfowl and raptors. Many of them are carriers, and the acute stage can be brought on by the type of stress that the male mallards probably caused her. To be certain, we would need to perform an aspergilla titer.”

  My head was swimming. “What was that you said she has?”

  “She probably has aspergillosis,” he repeated. “It is a fungal infection that birds can pick up in damp conditions that favor mold growth, especially if their immune system isn’t working like it should. Wet straw usually provides favorable conditions for the fungus, which is why we sometimes see this in animals kept in barns. Humans can get aspergillosis, too, so you have to be careful if you have close contact with an infected bird. It is not something you want to get,” he cautioned. “It resembles tuberculosis and it is very stubborn to treat.”

  “Is it fatal for a bird?” I asked, trying not to gulp. I stretched out a hand and placed it on Liza’s back for moral support.

  “Not necessarily,” he told me, with a rise in his voice that indicated it usually was. “What I would suggest is that we keep Liza overnight for observation. She’s pretty weak, so I would like to do a tube feeding to get some nourishment in her, and we’ll give her a vitamin injection. Aspergillosis is difficult to positively diagnose. We need to take a blood sample and send it to a lab in Chicago for an aspergilla titer. The result can take four or five days, so I would recommend that we assume she does have aspergillosis and begin the appropriate treatment immediately with an antifungal medication.”

  I didn’t know what a titer was, but I nodded my head while groping for a suitably intelligent facial expression. I left Liza in Dr. Fuller’s hands with far more optimism than the situation warranted. But his thoroughness impressed me with the belief that if anyone could turn the situation around, he could.

  Back home I hopped onto the Internet and posted a question on a pet-bird newsgroup, asking if anyone had successfully treated a bird stricken with aspergillosis. A few hours later I received an e-mail from a woman who called herself Toucanlady. “I treated an Amazon parrot that had the acute generalized form of aspergillosis. He was emaciated and very ill. He eventually recovered, but it is a long hard road. Good luck.”

  I headed back to the vet’s the next day to pick her up. The staff was all smiles once I stated my name and was recognized as the goose person. “We just love Liza,” a technician told me. “She’s so sweet.”

  “She didn’t try to bite anyone?” I asked.

  “Liza?” asked the technician incredulously. She reacted as if I had disparaged a lifelong friend with whom she used to share a carton of milk in kindergarten. “Liza wouldn’t bite anybody.”

  “No, no, of course not,” I assured her, recalling the muddy beak prints she had embossed on various shirts I owned. “Not Liza.”

  Dr. Fuller greeted me in the examination room, then led me through a secret doorway and into the inner recesses of the clinic. Guided by flickering torchlight, we trudged through miles of winding corridors before ending up in a squeaky-clean hospital area where hard-luck cases received constant care. Liza trumpeted a hello before I spotted her in the second tier of a shiny aluminum-sided high-rise of pens that somehow reminded me of restaurant ovens. I half expected to find our goose resting on a bed of wild rice.

  “Liza has been doing very well, haven’t you, Liza?” Dr. Fuller asked. She answered with an enthusiastic volley of staccato notes. The technician handed him a clipboard, which he glanced at briefly. “She took the tube feeding with no problem, and she’s been eating on her own. A
side from her getting her medication on schedule, her recovery depends on making sure she receives sufficient nourishment each day.”

  “Linda has already set up living quarters for her on our porch,” I told him. “Or maybe those are for me, and she’ll be moving into the house. At any rate, we’ll wait on her hand and foot until she’s well.”

  “In that case,” he said, while writing on the lab report, “I would list her prognosis as ‘Guarded’ upgraded to ‘Fair’”—he circled both words with ballpoint whorls—“as long as she receives the proper care. And I see that she’ll be getting that.”

  “She is our golden goose from now on,” I replied.

  That remark proved frighteningly accurate once I totaled up the bill for Liza’s treatment and lab tests, then added the cost of a pricey prescription that we couldn’t get filled just anywhere. Her antifungal medication wasn’t an off-the-shelf item. It needed to be compounded, meaning its chemical constituents had to be carefully measured and mixed by hand. Apparently, few pharmacists in the area did anything more ambitious than transferring pills from large containers to small bottles and filling out insurance forms. The closest drug store staffed by pharmaceutical initiates skilled in the ancient alchemical principles of compounding turned out to be a drug store located on a nearly impossible-to-access triangle-shaped block of businesses in the Grand Rapids suburb of Walker. Cars whizzed past me as I gathered cobwebs in the shadow of a stop sign on the busiest side street in America. From the condition of the drug store’s archaic glass-brick façade, its neon sign promising a soda fountain, and a yellowed portrait of Speedy Alka-Seltzer, few motorists apparently braved the left-hand turn to the Park Hills parking lot.