Arguing with ducks

 The neighbor next door feeds the ducks. The ducks are wild. Feeding wild animals is not a good idea, because the animals might become dependent on humans and because animals will associate people and food. Some wild animals, the human doesn’t have food, the human becomes food.

That last part doesn’t happen with ducks. Not to my knowledge, anyway. I have never read of a herd of ducks overwhelming a human because the human did not have the accustomed bag of duck food.

It could happen with alligators, the animal most associated with Florida. You feed the alligator in the pond out back, the alligator associates food = human, which can become human = food. When we moved here almost seven years ago, the pond out back had a five-foot-long alligator. It moved somewhere else, and only last year did another alligator make an appearance. The new alligator is only a couple of feet long and has lots of growing to do before finding a new home.

The neighborhood has bobcats and coyotes, too. Alligators, bobcats and coyotes are all dog and cat eaters. Everybody here wants to keep animals separated.

This morning, two Muscovy ducks – one boy duck and one girl duck -- ate at my neighbor’s outside feeding site, a pan on the ground. Boy Muscovies are big, weighing up to 15 pounds. That is a big duck. The one eating this morning looked that big. The girl Muscovy ate a few bites and then left. The boy Muscovy ate like he had somewhere to go, soon finished all the food and returned to the pond.

A couple of years back, not long after the neighbor started feeding ducks, I was out back, checking plants growing just outside the patio screen. Two brown ducks came out of the water. The boy duck went to my right and began billing at the grass. The girl duck came up to my left, about two feet away and immediately demanded food. “You da man,” she quacked. “Where da food?” I told her I was not the man. “All humans might look alike to you,” I said, “but I am not the man.” She insisted I was the man. I looked to my right to see what the boy duck was doing. “Dang!” I exclaimed at seeing three juvenile ducks near my feet. The youngsters made a good imitation of their mother, accusing me of being the man and demanding food. We argued back and forth for a time – “You da man,” “No, I am not the man,” “You da man,” and then I gave up and went in the house.

You can’t win an argument with ducks.