Duck!

I know that many of you reading this right now have often said to yourselves, "I wish I were a duck." I don't blame you; most people do. Or maybe I'm merely projecting -- until recently, I wished I were a duck.

See, I always liked ducks -- mallards, mainly -- because I felt an affinity for them that I could never explain. Maybe it's because I'm a guy and I think the males would make good role models for guys: they're great-looking and have a good manly name -- Drake. When a drake steps into the pond, you hear a collective sigh from all the females. The females are pretty but in a plain-Jane kind of way, and they don't even have a special name. They're just Duck, or Hen, which is even worse because a hen is already a hen. A duck calling herself a hen simply confuses everyone, especially baby hens (called chicks, which is also what -- never mind). So she's just duck, or ducky, if the two of you are on a nickname basis.

Nothing relaxes me more in life than to sit on the grass at the edge of a lake and have ducks feed out of my hand. Ducks aren't like gulls. When ducks are done feeding, at least I still have my hand. Their bills on my palm are like butterflies landing and taking off. When gulls feed from my hand, they're like miners trying to excavate with pick axes.

At the outset, I used the past tense when I spoke of wishing I were a duck. My original intent had been to rhapsodize about the glory and splendor that is duck. But then I started collecting information to support my hypothesis, and what I found sent my web-footed role models flying off their pedestals and high-tailing it south for the winter. That's because, as it turns out, a duck's life is no waddle in the park.


For instance, ducks get no respect when we talk about them:

We don't simply say we have a slight problem. Instead, we're dead ducks.

Obama can't just be in his second term of office. No, he has to be a lame duck.

No one says, "Hey, look out for that anvil!" They say, "You're a sitting duck." A duck who's just sitting wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the anvil.

"Duck" as a verb means to drop down low in order to avoid something, like a bullet or, when I was a kid, an atom bomb (as in "duck and cover"). So of course ducks are cowards now, too.

Certainly the most offensive expression (cover your eyes if you're sensitive) is "f*** a duck." No duck I know would willingly let this happen; therefore, we're sanctioning violence. It would almost be better to be shot down from the sky, which is the fate of so many ducks who've already spent a lifetime having to listen to us degrade them.

It's a good thing we have the saying, "Lord love a duck," since no one else will.


Another strike ducks have against them is that they're tasty:

Peking duck
duck a l'orange
duck tacos
duck poppers
duck pastrami
duck pot pie
duck confit quesadillas

Not to mention duck sauce over everything. Do you want to know how many different duck dishes there are?

483!

I ate sweet and sour duck once when I was young and naïve. It tasted OK. No -- it tasted great! But sometimes we just have to sacrifice our happiness for the greater good. Next time you get a hankering for duck, try peanut butter and jelly instead. No animals are harmed in the making of your sandwich. (It's especially good if you squish the sandwich down before eating it.)


Yes, you might be thinking, but what about ducks in popular culture? Aren't they respectable representatives of their amatine family? (Amatine -- just like "bovine" or "canine," but for ducks -- I looked it up.) Well, ha, I say, ha! Take a look:

Walt Disney gave us Donald Duck. What's his claim to fame? He's a whiner. All he does is complain and throw tantrums. He must absolutely terrify his three nephews. It's a wonder Daisy never moved out and issued a restraining order.

Warner Brothers gave us Daffy Duck. His trademark? He's a psychopath. He bounces off the edges of the TV screen in fits of hysteria, heedless of the safety of others. He also lisps, which is highly offensive (not to people who lisp, but to people whose job it is to be offended by cartoon characters).

The comic pages feature Mallard Fillmore, who has his own strip. Very nice -- but what, no Democratic ducks? Why should our only political duck have to be partisan at all and alienate half the eligible voters this country? I say we write in a third-party duck on next year's ballot, someone soft on immigration (who'll let ducks from other countries fly north for the summer).

Movies: Howard the Duck. If I'd been a duck in 1986, I'd have renounced my species and moved to Antarctica to become a penguin.

Music: "Disco Duck." Yes, millennials, I confess, baby boomers actually danced to this back when men wore white polyester and women suffered nosebleeds and vertigo from their platform shoes.

Advertising: The Aflac duck made a comfortable living shilling for an insurance company. All he had to do was yell "Aflac!" for thirty seconds. But even his reputation was tarnished. A few years ago, it was revealed that the duck didn't say his own lines at all, but bill-synced them while Gilbert Gottfried did the voice. I understand that Gottfried, who is a comedian and not exactly an actor, spent months with a dialogue coach working on his big (his only) line. He was exposed as the duck's stunt voice when he was fired for tweeting jokes about the terrible Japanese earthquake and tsunami of 2011. Aflac had to comply with the duck's long-term contract, however, so they covered up by having him lose his voice in a mine shaft explosion while they searched for a new voice. When they learned that Sam Kinison was dead, they approached Fran Drescher, whose people are currently talking to their people.

Finally, sports mascots: You'd think college football mascots would be the lone beacons of purity and animal values. Well, think again. In 2007, the University of Oregon's mascot, known as the Fighting Duck, attacked Shasta, the University of Houston's mascot, and was suspended for one game. It was the only recorded instance of a duck beating up a cougar.

So is it any wonder why I have trouble admitting to people my rapidly waning admiration for ducks? I think I'm even going to start keeping my rubber duck collection under the bathroom sink from now on. (I still have my battleships.)