Willie Smith

Duck Fever 

“Fuck a duck,” people say. Well, if you are going to fuck a duck, then you must fuck Donald in the butt. Ducks have but one hole. A cloaca – one orifice fits all. Shit, piss, fuck, pass an egg.

Once – at Green Lake – saw a dance line of sixteen mallards (yes, I counted) gang-raping a female in the cattails up by the north shore. There was a lot of quacking. All from the males. The hen looked too exhausted to make a sound. A drake would mount her, where she hunkered in the muck. Finished, he would waddle off, desultorily quacking, to rejoin the line at the back. 

Could not believe my eyes. They were going to fuck this poor duck to death. Shouldn’t I call someone? Did Attenborough have a hotline? Or would Jane Goodall be a better choice, over that stuffed scientific shirt? But would Goodall give a fuck about one lousy little gang-raped duck way off in Seattle Washing Ton?

Could I get a jogger or a baby stroller to lend a hand in breaking this up? Would not look good if proceeded alone. People think I was stomping ducks; run over and stomp me. Bottom line: Nobody gave a damn about Daisy’s bottom. Or dignity. Or her raped and ruined psyche. Say nothing of the bent over backwards Samaritan deep down in my own trashy soul. 

I sighed. Shook my head at my shoes. Then shrugged. Well, if you can’t beat ‘em, fuck ‘em. 

I stepped to the back of the line. Prayed to my inner Jesus that, when my turn came, I would indeed stoop, cradle her in my arms. Dash off with Daisy to the safety of a back booth in a nearby Aurora Avenue cocktail lounge. Order peanuts and gin martinis. Nurse us both back to health. 

For, you see, on the long ten minute walk, pressing her warmth against my chest, I would soon, perforce, with her into an alley duck. There to jam my own end in. I was a sick man, having caught the fever from those sixteen drakes so full of self-congratulatory quacks. Only a gulp or two of poison could start me on the road to recovery. 

I would beg her, in the dark of the booth, now we were lovers, to join me in my basement efficiency, just a bus ride down 45^th to University. We could suckle each other back to sanity, over the crazy wild taste of homemade – with Thai hot peppers – Mandarin Duck. 

I would show her my new bought-online baster, before the wringing, the plucking, the gutting, the roasting, the sixteen further tweaks needed to bring both Daisy and my hungry self to perfection. 

Surely she would understand her paramount importance to the ceremony? 

When my turn at last comes, I behold for one lusty moment the quivering being at my feet. Then the eyes close. Somebody (probably me) tears off my clothes, and I sprint nude the three mile circumference of the lake, screaming at the getting-off-work swelling crowd of joggers, mothers, fathers, cyclists, rollerbladers, snotty kids and speed-walkers: 

“Does anybody mind the universe, and all its multiples, are raping our minds?” 

I leave you, as I roll over to sleep on the cot in my cell, the above cautionary tale; wiggling, perhaps, your own mind like the tail of a deceived duck, leaving the pearls he or she, at a distance, mistook for popcorn.