When Ducks Attack

It was a muggy morning; the buzz of cicadas filled the air. I’d taken care of the dogs and was heading out for some exercise of my own. As I turned the first corner, I saw motion ahead. One of our local waterfowl had achieved target lock and was waddling toward me on an intercept course. I scanned the environment.

This had never happened before. The neighborhood has a few ponds that they call lakes because they have a fountain. Add a fountain to a water-retention pond and apparently you can call it a lake. Aaron Rodgers could throw a football with ease over these “lakes.” Joe Namath could. Me, not so sure. No one will confuse them with Lake Erie. I digress.

No other ducks were visible. Ducks are normally social and prefer to hang out with their flock or float around in groups called rafts. My spidey sense tingled as the beast continued to trudge toward me. Apparently, I was inside of minimal flight distance for an attack.

His webbed feet slapped the concrete sidewalk as he closed the distance. Apparently, he was without any sort of ranged weapon and intended to make this a melee attack. 

I looked around. If I was going to be assaulted by a duck, I wanted witnesses to the mayhem. Someone to testify in my defense at a possible duck abuse trial.

“Beat it punk. This is my lake. Bring breadcrumbs or face my wrath,” he hissed. (Note, this is based on Google Translate’s interpretation, and they are notoriously unreliable when used on waterfowl speech.)

There were no witnesses in sight as he aggressively invaded my personal space and crowded me off the sidewalk and into the road. Great, I thought, I’m going to be hit by a car because I’m walking away from a fight. Backing down, as it were. I tried an end-around, accelerating and curving back to the sidewalk.

Ducks are surprisingly fleet of webbed foot. He pursued. Now my man card was at stake. It was time to stand up for my pedestrian right of way. I held my ground. 

His first strikes came in low. A couple of quick bill jabs to my foot. Did this idiot think my shoes were edible? For the sake of the curious, I’ll tell you that the average duck brain is around 6600 cubic millimeters – about 0.4 cubic inches. Pull out a stick of butter, cut off just under half an inch, and that’s what we’re talking about in terms of gray matter. Figure most of that is dedicated to flight, floating, and mating, and we’re down to very little left for food identification.

I stood my ground until he worked his way up to my tender, bare, shin and took a nip. I yelled something articulate like, “scram,” and he backed off. I went on my way; grateful they have no teeth.

This brings my list of animals who have attacked me to four, and this is not counting assaults from my own cats and dogs: 

Coyote (okay, this was by proxy – they attacked my dog while we were peacefully jogging in the woods)

Raccoon (minor pulled muscle from the skirmish, although the trash panda claims he never touched me)

Crawdad – I was on dry land, running on the local high school track. He had no right to molest me and interfere with my workout. (see photo for proof)

Duck

Do people in New York City have this problem? 

For those following Ash on Kindle Vella, four episodes are now up. I’m launching a new episode every week. 

Here’s the link to Episode 2 – you can find the rest from there.