"Somebody Busted My Duck!"

When my children were younger, we had the equivalent of a zoo, but only a few of these pets were chosen by us—or, to be more specific, chosen by me. Most either arrived unannounced or were dragged home by one of the children. Let me begin with the latter.


When Cartier and her friend Andrea were in elementary school, they “found” a cat on the playground during recess. To “protect” the cat, they put her in their locker, which explains a great deal about the issues this cat had throughout her very prolific life. Cartier brought her home in her back pack, and a very few days later, she delivered her first litter. I cannot even recall what Cartier called her because I always called her “Slut Kitty” in my head and “Jezebel” aloud. I was able to find homes for this first litter and planned a trip to the vet to have her spayed as soon as the kittens were weaned. However, when I arrived home from school the day I had planned to take her to the vet, she had run off to "cat" around enough to return home pregnant, again. She was quite the tramp but had beautiful kittens. We had four more litters before I was able to nab her after procreation, kitten birth, and weaning and before she set out on another floozy adventure. With the fifth batch, I’d run out of friends and friends of friends who’d take all of the kittens. We therefore had to keep four of these. We had just seen The Aristocats, and so three of the four were named for the kittens in the movie: Marie, Toulouse, and Berlioze. John named his Sweet Sugar, and she was anything but. She was a pretty kitten, and so John decided to enter her in the July Jubilee pet show on the courthouse lawn. She didn’t win. She did scratch the dickens out of John’s face during her showing. He walked over to me after the show, dejected that Sweet Sugar had not won and forgiving of her for bloodying his face. I was not too fond of that cat, but John did not hold her bad behavior against her.


We also had a big old dog of nondescript lineage that dropped in one day and stayed several years until his demise. For no particular reason, one of the kids named him George. He was a good old dog with a wonderfully kind personality. George never hurt the kittens and rarely barked. Sadly, he, like Jezebel, Sweet Sugar, Marie, and Berlioze, eventually fell prey to the speeding cars on Route 10 in front of our house. Gavin and I had to create a hammock of sorts from large leaf bags to get him off the road and to our pet cemetery, and we both cried all the way up the long driveway.


The only pets we had that came to be the bane of my existence—and no, it did not include Slut Kitty--were the ducks. One Easter, a well-intentioned person gave the kids a “gift” of four little ducks. Had I known about a gift of four ducks before they arrived, I would have nixed it in short order. As it were, the man brought them while the kids were out in the yard, and those darned ducks were adored before I could say “No.” (Mom smiled and said, “What goes around comes around,” reminding me of the time I brought home Kutie, a “free puppy” from the Feed Store. Kutie was a much-loved mutt by me, but she dug holes in the yard like a fiend possessed.)


Now back to the ducks. Yes, they arrived as adorable little fluffy yellow ducks, but they grew up to be big white mean ducks that molted all over the back yard and stole food from the cats. George was even terrified of them, and not without reason. When those darn ducks were not eating the cats' food, chasing George, swimming in our little pond, or quacking their heads off, they were molting. And let me tell you, you cannot rake up duck feathers. Our yard sometimes looked as though someone had shredded toilet paper all over every square inch of grass. It was not pretty.

I hated those ducks with a passion, but the kids, and especially Samantha, loved them. I grieved over George when he was killed and was sad when the cats went, but those ducks were wily. They did not go near that road except for once. On that occasion, I learned of the carnage when I heard Samantha shouting to me from her bedroom upstairs. “Somebody busted my duck!” she yelled. She was only four or so at the time, but she knew what she had seen. While in her room, which had two dormer windows that faced Route 10, she had seen a car hit one of the ducks. By the time I looked out the front door, feathers were still wafting through the air. Samantha was not so much sad as she was angry. She wanted justice and someone arrested. “That car killed my duck!” she kept protesting, hands on hips, a scowl on her face. I finally had to pretend to phone the sheriff to lodge a “police report” about the duck murder.


Because of the number of years we lived in that house and the vast numbers of pets we had—dogs, cats, ducks, turtles, and goldfish—pet funerals had reached the state of high art with all the pomp and circumstance the kids could muster.


Behind the garage, there was an area for the horses. In front of this fence, we had a private pet cemetery, and by the time the duck was busted, the funeral rites were quite formal. The kids would put the deceased into a suitable box wrapped in a blanket or tea towel—or in the case of Ophelia the goldfish, encased in a plastic bag. They next dug a hole of adequate depth, and, with great solemnity, interred the pet. After the grave was covered over, Gavin both preached the sermon and sang the hymns. (It was no surprise to any of us that he became an actor and performer since he had been honing that skill for years, using us as the audience.) While Gavin preached—sometimes quite lengthy sermons—and sang--always more than one hymn--the rest of us served as mourners. Flowers were then placed on the grave and a hastily-cobbled-together cross was stuck into the ground. One year, Samantha even printed up programs for the event. Yes, the Esham family knew how to give a great funeral.


But of all the pets we had over the years, Toulouse—one of Jezebel’s last litter--was the most loved and longest-lived. He was with us for nearly fourteen years. Toulouse was a big fluffy yellow cat with a laid back personality that bordered on California surfer cool as he distained any traditional cat pastimes like chasing a ball of yarn or batting at a string. No, Toulouse liked lounging on the chairs or couch and bird watching, and frequently, he watched television with the kids. When Samantha and John were in high school, their friends found it endearing and amusing that Toulouse, who by then had a weak lung, slept draped over the arm of the couch. However, when some of Samantha’s guy friends mocked him too severely, they incurred her wrath in no uncertain terms. He was, after all, technically her cat, but all of us loved him. The day Toulouse left—he was an in-an-out cat—but didn’t return, I knew he had gone off to die. By then, we were living in a subdivision, having left the other house and its pet cemetery a few years before. But I would be less than honest if I didn’t admit that I would have liked to bury Toulouse with all the honors he deserved. He was one great cat and one I remember fondly all these years later.


A few years ago, after I had had to give away the cat that came with me to Florida because he would not stay inside as was required by my condo rules—he’d knocked out all the screens on the front breezeway and had begun to spite pee on the carpet—Cartier mused that she understood because I had never liked pets. I nearly blew a gasket. “I’ve never liked pets?” I shouted, my voice dripping with righteous indignation. “Are you kidding me? We’ve had cats, kittens, dogs, turtles, fish, two horses, and four damned ducks! Most of them at the same time! We had a zoo, for Pete’s sake!”

Cartier’s reply—and she excels at wit and sarcasm—was choice and typical of her: “Sounds like somebody busted your duck, Mom.”