TheBanyanTree: Looking Out My Back Door

[Theta Brentnall]

I don't get much pleasure, looking out my back door today.  Things are much 
too still in the back yard.  When I went out this morning on the daily hunt 
for Ethel's egg, I found only sorrow.  Something big and fierce invaded the 
yard last night.  There are tracks of a cat much larger than a house cat, 
most likely a bob cat's track, in the soft dirt of the flower beds, and 
only a scattering of feathers where Ethel made her nest in the iris.  There 
was another pile of feathers down by the back fence and no ducks.  No Fred 
and Ethel at all.  My poor duckies.

We do live close to the wild here, but it is easy to forget that most of 
the time.  The deer run through the orchard, but don't come up in the 
pasture.  We hear the coyotes singing in the moonlight, but they don't come 
across the fences into the yard, and the bobcat stays down in the preserve 
along the lake.  But sometimes the roses get pruned by the deer and the 
raccoons steal the cats' food and the coyotes kill a neighborhood cat.  And 
the bobcat comes looking for an easy dinner in my back yard.  Then we 
remember that the wild is close by and it can be glorious and terrible at 
the same time, when the wild is close by.

I'm sure Fred fought fiercely.  He was a fierce duck, intrepid in his 
pursuit and harassment of the dogs and my ankles.  The dogs just ran from 
him, and I would grab him gently but firmly by the beak to keep him from 
nipping me.  Sometimes when he was just too persistent, I would scoop him 
up and launch him out across the grass.  He would flap heroically down to a 
semi-controlled crash landing and come quacking and flapping right back up 
to me to do it all over again.  Ethel was the quiet one, hiding behind her 
fierce guard duck.  Her only daring move was to tap on the glass of the 
french door when she wanted a handfull of corn.

I shall miss them.  I hope they are swimming in the little duck pond at the 
base of the Banyan tree, with lots of good corn and snails to eat, and Fred 
is pecking at Herman's ankles.

Theta