The nastiest duck in the yard.

As you will recall I, at one time, had a  flock of 37 ducks and 15 geese here on South Road.  I can only thank God Kenny did not live to see that fiasco.  In that flock there were 4 Muscovy ducks.  All the others were just plain ducks.  By that I mean they were plain little Polander which is a domesticated Mallard that can not fly, or a mix of breeds that were like the United Nations of Duckdom.  I did have one that walked upright.  That one was white.  There was also one that was a cross which walked about half upright.  When Mr. Fox finished visiting, I had 2 ducks left, a Polander and the white upright.  A friend took them to the pond in Pueblo West and to the best of my knowledge they are still living happily ever after.  Below is a picture of the flock about half way through the fox episode.

The point of this entry is to discuss the nastiness of the 4 Muscovy ducks.  To the best of my knowledge, the Muscovy is the  only ones that can fly, and fly they did very well.  Let me go back a little further to the house on Strong Street in Nickerson, Kansas.  You recall it was built in the shotgun design which meant you entered the front and if an intruder was in the back you could  fire a shell in your 10 gauge and the shot would travel through the house and hit the bad man without touching anything else.  On the back wall was the sink and pump with a drain pipe from the sink that went through a hole in the back wall and water from the dish washing process or whatever else could be disposed of that way without having to carry a bucket outside.  It sure made life easier for us lazy little kids.

So now you are probably wondering where the water went after it got outside, aren't you?  Well, the end of the pipe was about 15 feet from the house and that is where the water went.  Also in the back yard was where the ducks lived.  I do not remember how many we had, but I do know they were nasty.  They took their little beaks and dug into the standing water looking for God only knows what to eat.  Of course anything that went in that beak was going to come out the other end.  Needless to say we were not allowed to play in that standing water.  Pretty sure that was one rule that we did abide by!

Now, I have got to explain how a Muscovy duck is different than other ducks.  Domesticated ducks do not fly.  The Muscovy is a whole different story.  The neck on the males is very thick.  The males are also very aggressive.  They did not quack, but rather whispered.  And they flew.  The would leave the pond and fly into my small back yard and roost on my air conditioner.  Now I did not like that.  When I tried to shoo them out back the males would ruffle their feathers and scare hell out of me.  The females were very docile and about half the size of the drakes.  One morning I went to the fowl house and found a dead goose.  It's neck had been broken.  Since the fowl house was attached to a wire enclosure whatever killed the goose had to be inside that place.  I watch my geese fight all through breeding season and never have I seen that kind of violence.  It had to be one of the Muscovy drakes.  So I called the guy over on County Farm Road and he came and was in agreement with my findings.  He then loaded all 4 Muscovy's into his truck and off the to the sale they went.  I never tried Muscovy's again.

Above is what I have left of my flock.  Actually I have all 4 of the African Grays, which are the dark ones. One of them is a hen.   I lost 2 of the white ones, leaving me with 2 male Emidens and 1 male and 1 female Chinese.  The two hens lay in the Spring and I practice birth control via noodle making.  Snakes are rampant in the goose house since they like eggs so as long as I keep the eggs picked up, the snakes are forced to find me some other way.  I am going to get someone out here to go in the neighbors yard and move that pile of tires because I think the snakes live in there. 

Or under my deck!

Well, that is it for today.  Spring is here.  The ducks are all gone and the weeds are coming up in the fence line so I better get on the stick.

Time and tide wait for no man...or woman!

I wish I was smart enough to read it myself.

The television is full of the Mueller report that has just been released!  I have 4 people on channel 11 explaining to me what the report says.  See, I am not smart enough to read something and know what it says, so they have to tell me.  Hmm.  Seems my late husband had a saying that fits the cause here.  "Opinions are just like assholes!  Every body has one and most of them stink."  Just saying that this is the time of morning when Millionaire comes on for my perusal enjoyment.  I love that game along with Jeopardy and any other trivia game that comes on my television set.

I do not know if the American people have yet figured out that when my game shows are interrupted for a basketball game, a special bulletin from Washington, it thrills me almost as much as when the "breaking weather"  preempts what I am watching so I can stare for 3 hours at the weather map and watch a tiny cloud on the horizon that might or might not come to fruition as a snowflake on the road between Colorado Springs and Denver.  The broadcaster must warn motorists of the hazards if this actually happens.  Not once, not twice, but over and over and over again.  These people out there driving are not smart enough to check the weather before they leave one job to go to another.  Now how many of these motorists have an actual television set in the car and are actually watching that little cloud is beyond my comprehension.  While I am comfy in my chair waiting for a Jeopardy! rerun that is not going to happen the world in the television weather room is a bustle of a man in a suit or a lady in a little blue dress walking back and forth across in front of the camera smiling.

Now I have got to go on record here as saying, my life is pretty much boring or this would not bother me.  I have lived many years on this earth and seen about all there is to see.  I can actually remember back  when Winter weather was predicted by the length of the hairs on the caterpillar and rainfall was predicted by how high up the mud dauber built her nest.  Leaves folded inward if the weather was going to be dry.  And President Franklin Roosevelt had little fireside chats with us on the radio so we knew what was going on with our government.  And when the war ended it took him 3 words to tell us, "The War is over."  And we knew the war was over.  Three means of communications were "Telephone, Telegraph and Tell a friend."

Well, the crisis with the Mueller report must be over for the time being because I hear the sounds of "The Price is Right" on the downstairs television.  Brandi from the Travel Agency just called me so I could hang up on her.  Soon someone else will call to send me my new credit card!  And then there is that trip I can go on if I hurry.  But I have other plans for today.

I am going to crawl in my little car here pretty quick and go meet a couple lady friends at the Red Lobster.  Yummers!  Then I am going to come home and see if I can possibly load a couple television sets in the back of my car and take them to the recycle place and pay them $60 to take them.  Maybe I will get something done down stairs in that one bedroom since I have someone coming to stay with me for a while in May.  Or maybe not.

The nice part of being an old woman living alone is I do not actually have to do anything at all.  Oh, watch Jeopardy! at 3:00 and again at 6:30.  And then there is my 8:00 bedtime.  Seems I am sleeping a lot more lately, but that is alright, because I have very nice dreams!

Oh, the things in my mind.

Click here to listen  I woke up this morning with this song on my mind.  Then I went to facebook and some one had posted the same link.  Small world.  However the context the person had posted the link was far different than the link in my mind.

Like most, actually all, people, I had a father.  I knew him.  Or I thought I did.  A very wise woman once told me, "You never really know anyone, you only know of them.  You know what they let you see."  And so it was with my father.  He was a lot older than my mother, but the wedding picture shows a very happy woman.  My mother was very well liked in high school and married soon after she graduated.  Sadly that marriage did not end well and soon she returned to her roots and married my father.  He was a widower (? but some secrets are best left untold).  He had 3 sons that were past their teens.  They had been put into an orphanage when Dad's first wife died.  2 were adopted, one was not.

Jake was the first born to this union followed by me, Donna, Mary and Dorothy.  We were all as different as night and day.  Jake was the only son and he was a screw up according to my father.  Of course I was perfect, but he never did particularly like me much.  He was of the old school that kids were to be raised and leave home.  Now just look at me!  Wasn't I the cutest thing you ever seen?

Donna was smack in the middle so she had middle child syndrome.  Dorothy was the baby, so she carried those tendencies throughout her life.  Ah, but Mary.  Mary was cute and delicate and everyone loved Mary. Now you must understand that this is being written by me and is my feelings.  I am sure if the other sisters were alive they would dispute my findings, but you must realize that we are all a product of our raising and I never at any time ever in my life ever thought my father cared about me in any way shape or form.  It was as if I existed in a vacuum.  If he was there he ignored me.  He refused to attend my first marriage.  I simply did not exist.

Ah, but he had a weakness.  He liked babies. Shortly after the birth of my first daughter he paid my older sister to sew her a pretty red dress and he bought shoes and a hat to match.  Some where I have that picture of him holding Debra when she was about a year old and wearing that outfit.  That is the only one of my children he ever touched.  I don't recall him ever touching me in anger or love.  I never actually had a conversation with the man.  If I fell and skinned my knee that was my problem. 

And then he died.  By this time I had the 3 girls.  I left them with my sister in law and came home for the funeral.  I remember how very sad that was.  I stood at his open coffin and cried my heart out for a man I never knew.  I do not think a child ever understands their parents and I envy the children who played catch with their fathers.  Or took walks.  Or went fishing.  That is why I always tried to keep my kids and their father in close contact.  He and I had a strained relationship, but he and the kids found a way to make it sort of work.  We sort of shared custody, but that is water under the bridge.

I do remember far in the back of my mind, that dad was a share cropper with a man named John Britan.  John had acreage across the river and sometimes (and I will never know why) I would go with dad to the acreage and John Britan would make me hot chocolate using cocoa, sugar, hot water, and Pet milk.  It was the best stuff in the world!  I have tried to make it but it is never the same.  I also remember that there was a little creek that run through the farm and sometimes it had water in it.  Jake made me a little boat out of a flat piece of wood.  He put a stick through a hole and tied a string to it so it would not get away.

So, as sad as my childhood was, I do have some good memories.  I just forget them sometimes.