This weekend, our sweet duck, Luna, passed away. She had turned eight in May, and I could see in the last couple of weeks that the end was near. She mostly sat around and didn’t hunt bugs all day like the other ducks. The morning she died, when I let her out of the duck house, she just went to one of the water bowls, took a drink, and stared off into the distance for the longest time. I knew we were in trouble when the turkeys just completely gave Luna her space in the morning. Turkeys are generally terrible at giving people their space. They knew something was up. Turkeys know things, but that’s another post.
I miss Luna so much. She spent about three months in the house with us in 2023 when Bairre accidentally ran over her and badly injured her leg. Luna loved to watch television with me. We watched all three seasons of The Lost Kitchen together.
And Luna loved to fly.
When she couldn’t walk after her injury, I would pick her up and carry her from her bin to the bathtub for tub time and then back again. It didn’t take long for her to make a game out of it. She would flap and flap her wings, and I would hold her like she was flying through the air. Pretty soon, she wanted to fly all the time, so I would just carry her around while she flew when she would get antsy.
I am so thankful for that time to really know her. I am so thankful she got three more years on her life. She lived the best duck life, truly, and eight years old is a really good run for a runner duck.
There is more bad news though. Anna Maria is winding down as well.
Anna Maria is the blind duck that I inherited in 2019 after she had been over mated on her farm and was seriously injured. A few years ago, she went blind from her injuries, and well, I am not going to lie: Her care has been a profound challenge over the years.
The reason it’s so hard for her is because she has very little skin on her skull from her injuries early in life, so even a mild amount of mating from our male duck can cause trouble. This spring, like every spring for the last seven years, I had to change my life to help Anna Maria heal from being mated. Usually, after some time in the house, I am able to let her spend her days with her people but then have to catch her every night, so she isn’t locked in the duck house with our male.
This year was a really tough year though. One day she was fine, and the next day she looked like she had lost her left eye, and I could see her skull. It took a long time to heal her–a really long time. Her body is getting older, and all the things that I had done before to help speed along her recovery just weren’t working. It broke my heart when she started hiding from me at night because she didn’t want to be kidnapped and kept separate from the rest of the ducks, but obviously, she couldn’t be left alone with our male duck until her head healed and our male duck got over his “spring fever.”
Thankfully, she finally started to heal, and it was a good thing. I was so exhausted from everything else plus healing an injured duck that I COVID crashed really, really hard. When you COVID crash, your muscles stop working. It’s from the damaged cells. With long COVID, the cells in your muscles sometimes can’t replenish their energy, and it becomes hard to move. I have crawled up the stairs of this house way too many times in the last two years, but one night after weeks of caring for Anna Maria and then my son who got sick at the first of June, I couldn’t even crawl up the stairs. I remember sitting there on the stairs wondering what was going to have to happen for me to get up the stairs to our bedroom.
I had been thinking of asking Ron about getting more ducks, even though we swore we wouldn’t. But I couldn’t imagine my life without those ducks. Still, sitting there on those stairs for those minutes made me realize we probably didn’t need more ducks.
I finally made it up the stairs with some will I didn’t know I had, and I told Ron about the whole story later–including the part about wanting duck. It turns out he had been thinking about ducks too.
“The only big trouble the ducks have been have all be related to Anna Maria,” he said. “She’s not a normal duck.”
We both agreed that we would not do a thing differently, that we were both so thankful to know Anna Maria and to see her strength but that she was, indeed, an epic amount of unusual work because she came to us with such profound injuries that would impact her for the rest of her life. The other ducks were pretty easy, outside of some bumble foot, which I now know how to treat very well.
The next morning, I didn’t give Ron a chance to change his mind. I ordered four little ducks from the same farm in California that we had ordered our original ducks from years ago.
For eight years, every night, I have been playing the duck game with the ducks. Every single night of our lives, I fill a white bowl of frozen peas, cook them, add water, feed the ducks, and then chase them around the duck house until they feel like going inside the duck house. The love this game and shake their little tails at me. I can’t imagine my life without the duck game.
In recent weeks, I have been playing a different duck game though. Anna Maria isn’t coming for peas. She’s hiding in the corner of the yard. I know this is a really bad sign, and every night, I get the flashlight and go on a hunt for our little blind duck. I find her, herd her toward the duck house, and once she’s with her people, she eats some peas–until tonight.
I have noticed that Anna Maria hasn’t been eating duck food the last two days. I have tried everything I can. I keep putting food in front of her. I even distract the turkeys and take bits of her favorite treat–Ron’s homemade wheat bread. But she’s not eating that either. Then, tonight, I played my new duck game. I went and found her, herded her toward the other ducks, put down the white bowl of peas, and for the first time in the last seven years since I have been caring for her, Anna Maria did not eat any peas.
I am heartbroken.
I am relieved I have served that duck as well as humanly possible. I have given her a really good life. She has spent her years in a beautiful yard with a pool and peas and people she loved (I mean, not me but her people), and she had her needs met in every way possible. She did have to deal with a male duck, but I worked really hard to keep her safe from him when necessary. Plus, to be fair, Anna Maria has always been a terrible flirt.
And, even though she never forgave me for all the medical treatment I had to give her when she had to be rehabbed when we first got her, she would never want me to tell you this, but sometimes, when she needed help, she would come to me. I would pick her up, and she would put her little head on my shoulder.
Oh, I am heartbroken.
