Stories From My Past: I Nearly Got Bit By A Duck

There is a pond behind my parent's house. The pond has all of the wildlife you'd expect to see at a pond within city limits. There were fish (well, carp). Squirrels. Insects. The occasional snake. And ducks.

One summer day, I was mowing the yard and one of those dang ducks came running right at me. He had his wings out, trying to look intimidating. He was quacking like a bullhorn. And he was limping badly.

So here I am, pushing the lawn mower toward this limping duck bomb, and he's running at me. It looked like some bizarre game of chicken. All I could think was, "If I hit him with the mower, what kind of ... mess ... will I have to clean up?" It was not a comforting thought, so I stopped the mower.

That dang duck ran around the mower and toward my legs! He was trying to bite me!

I was in no mood to run from a duck. I gave a half-hearted kick at the silly thing. I caught him under his right wing, just enough to push him over toward his left side. The duck was obviously not prepared for this. The aggressive quacking quickly became a panicked "Oh Poopy!" sort of noise, and he turned and ran away.

I went inside the house, where my mom was. "Why'd you stop mowing?" "A duck tried to bite me." This caused mom to pause. Then she asked, "Was he limping?" "er... yeah." "Oh! That was Gimpy!"

I was shocked. The devil-duck had a name? And it's name was "Gimpy"? Suddenly, I found myself on the defensive. "Why did he attack you? What did you do to him?" "Nothing! I was just mowing and he came after me!" "Did you run away?" "No, I kicked him." "YOU KICKED GIMPY?!?"

Come to find out, Gimpy was running away from some healthy (and quite aggressive) ducks, and Mom got between Gimpy and his oppressors. She chased the others away. Gimpy quickly realized that Mom would protect him, so he adopted our yard as his own. I actually saw Gimpy run up to Mom once and hide behind her when the other ducks were around.

Naturally, since Gimpy was a lame-legged duck in the wild (well,... relatively speaking), he didn't last too long. But while he was alive and stumblin', he had a home.