Our Gay Ducks — itmustbebobby

The hens’ bare red bottoms were the first indication that anything was amiss in the coop. It had been a long week of subzero February temperatures, during which our nine hens and two ducks remained literally cooped up. When the weather finally improved and we let the birds back into the yard, the circular patches of pimply chicken flesh on their naked rumps stood out like little red dodgeballs against the snowy white backdrop, bobbing gently up and down as the hens pecked at the frozen ground.

Allison surmised that the hens had probably done this to each other, picking at each other’s butt feathers out of boredom, bullying each other to pass the time on those frigid days and even colder nights during that past week.

It was also around this time that Chickaletta (so named because she looked exactly like the Paw Patrol character) keeled over, falling from her perch facedown onto the bedding on the coop’s floor. The feathers on her backside were mostly still intact, but the flesh was swollen and streaked with blood. Allison had come running into the house to tell me something was seriously wrong, but by the time we got back outside, Chickaletta was dead. After some frantic googling, we determined that she had probably become “egg bound,” an often-fatal condition in which an egg becomes trapped in a hen’s oviduct, causing constipation and infection, then shock and death.

Chickaletta was not a large hen, and I theorized that perhaps she had been done in by her propensity to come up on the porch and pilfer cat food, which our cats, Odin and Minerva, did an embarrassingly poor job of preventing. The extra protein in their food, I thought, may have caused her eggs to grow too large to be expelled properly, leading to her ultimate demise.

It wasn’t until spring finally arrived that we began to realize the hens had other problems beyond the winter blues and their addiction to cat food. The ducks, Jackie and Ari (named by Allison for Jacqueline Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis) seemed to have gotten bigger over the winter … and more aggressive.

When we moved to rural Michigan, owning ducks had not been part of the original plan. Allison had purchased them impulsively: “I went a little rogue,” is how she put it when she returned from the farm store last spring with not only 11 baby chicks but also two adorable little ducklings. As they began to mature, we had initially thought Jackie was female; “she” was smaller than Ari and seemed at first to have feminine coloring, but once the full pattern of feathers emerged, including the white collar and curly tail feathers that signify drakes, we realized they were both male.

We’d been hoping for large, delicious duck eggs, of course, but instead the only thing this chatty, waddling pair would be contributing was a large amount of poop in the yard and a constant stream of quacks. Still, they seemed pleasant enough at first, and Jackie in particular liked to be picked up and held. Ari was a bit more standoffish, but harmless. So, although they weren’t contributing to the homestead with eggs like we’d hoped they would, they weren’t so annoying that we felt like we needed to get rid of them either. We just had to think of them as pets.

But now they were a year old, invigorated by the spring and surging with more duck testosterone than ever before, and they had begun to feel the tug of their biological imperative. Ari, the larger and more assertive of the two, had taken a liking to Sweety, a dappled and apparently very sexy barred rock hen.

I first noticed Ari trying to mount Sweety in the yard one afternoon, as I was getting in the car to go pick Oscar up from preschool. He had her pinned down and was trying feverishly to enter her from the rear, as she squawked furiously and tried to squirm away. Jackie seemed to be running interference for his loutish brother, doing circles around the mismatched pair as the other hens tried to intervene on their poor sister’s behalf.

Witnessing this bizarre attempt at interspecies copulation brought out something primal in me, and I immediately jumped out of the car and went running toward them, shouting angrily at Ari to desist. There was a great commotion as I separated them, squawking and clucking and quacking and wings beating angrily as the ducks and chickens all started rushing away from me, back across the yard. Undeterred, Ari caught up with Sweety again under the RV, pinning her down in the shadows, out of my reach. I had to grab a large stick to separate them again, then I chased Ari and Jackie into the field behind our house, away from the hens, who ran together as a group in the other direction, toward the relative safety of the coop.

My heart was pounding, really beating out of my chest, far more than I felt it “should” be, given that this had been a relatively low stakes encounter (for me!) with an animal that was not even capable of hurting a human being. It occurred to me that this was another in a series of little realizations I’d had since moving away from the city — New York and then Rochester — where I’d lived my entire life. I have never gone hunting, or even fishing, properly, always telling myself that not only am I not really interested in killing animals but also that it seems kind of boring. Perhaps I always imagined that people who like hunting really just like guns and that shooting animals is marginally more interesting than, say, taking target practice. But the surge of adrenaline I felt chasing these wily waterfowl was surprising, almost frightening, in its intensity, and it wasn’t just because I saw myself as some kind of white knight rescuing our beleaguered but pulchritudinous poultry. The thrill of hunting, I realized, is really the thrill of the chase — that moment when a deer comes into view, or you feel a tug on your fishing line, and suddenly you are locked in a life and death struggle with another living creature. The animal you’re pursuing need not even be able to hurt you itself (though certainly that would make it all the more thrilling); it still touches something primordial, harkening us back to the days when we had hunt to survive.

I held out hope at first that this would be an isolated incident, which was ridiculous in retrospect. Over the coming days and weeks, Ari only ratcheted up his pursuit of Sweety. Allison and I had to separate them multiple times per day — and as the abusive attacks grew in frequency, my anger did as well. I felt quite justified in giving Ari a swift kick, if he was within reach, or else swatting him with a broom as he tried to flee prosecution from his crimes. I soon noticed that Sweety now hung back in the coop when we opened it for the day, perching up high where the ducks, with their squat little legs, couldn’t reach her. Instead, they would wait for her in the yard, or rush at her again in the coop if she tried to come down for some food or a drink of water.

We became even more concerned once we learned that a drake can actually kill a hen with his penis, if he is able to successfully enter her. Not only does a drake’s penis extend up to eight inches — it also has a corkscrew shape and can rupture a hen’s large intestine or oviduct, or even rip them right out. (Roosters, interestingly, like most male birds, do not have a penis at all. Ducks, on the other hand, are among the 3% of male bird species that do have a penis, and they get very horny.) Based on this new information, Allison and I began to wonder whether that had actually been Chickaletta’s fate — raped to death by Ari on a cold morning in February, with Jackie beating the other hens back with his broad, powerful wings as they tried desperately to save her. We also realized that the hens’ bare red bottoms, plucked clean of feathers and trembling in the snow, had also likely been the handiwork of the ducks, reaching up with their beaks to tug at the butts of low-roosting hens — and not even out of boredom necessarily, but rather so that Ari could get a better look at the gallinaceous curves of his desired prize. What a loathsome bullying pair they had become!

Still, I thought, perhaps nature would sort itself out. The chickens, of course, are able to fly up and perch in places the ducks can’t reach — which Sweety was already doing — and eventually mating season would pass. Perhaps they could still learn to coexist.

Red bare bottom, feathers plucked clean.

The days were getting longer now, and the hens and ducks maintained their typical evening behavior. Chickens naturally return to the coop to roost when the sun begins to set — instinctive behavior that helps them avoid predators at night. Ducks apparently do not have this same self-preservation instinct, and it had initially been difficult to get them to return inside at night. I eventually realized, however, that by shining a lantern at them, I could guide them in the direction I wanted and “chase” them back into the coop without too much trouble. From there, it didn’t take them long to learn to return home on their own. Still, they liked to stay out later than the chickens, tottering around aimlessly as dusk fell over the yard, but they would reliably begin to make their way back to the coop as soon as I emerged from the house.

One night recently, I was later than usual getting outside to lock up the coop. The coop was quiet, which meant the chickens were probably asleep already, or close to it — but still, I expected to hear the ducks quacking anxiously from within. As I entered the building, I could immediately see the hens, all lined up on their perches, heads drooping sleepily. The ducks, however, were nowhere to be found. My first thought was that perhaps a predator had absconded with them — a hawk, or a fox, even a coyote was a possible culprit. But as I wandered out into the yard, using my phone as a flashlight, I heard faint quacking in the distance. Approaching the garage, I heard a rustling in the bushes off to the side, and then, suddenly, Ari and Jackie emerged: Jackie first, his head twisting toward the light of my phone, panic in his dark, dumb eyes, then immediately behind him — but more like halfway up his backside, mid-thrust — Ari, struggling to take his unrequited passion for Sweety out on his poor brother. I stood agape, squinting in the dwindling light. Ari’s erstwhile partner in crime, Jackie, who had stood guard and run interference while his devilish kin tried to befoul our fowl, had now become a victim of those beastly advances as well.

“Get the fuck off him, you dirty duck!” I shouted sharply. They were both looking at me now, looking very guilty indeed, as Ari reluctantly dismounted, quacking bitterly and flapping his wings in my direction. My shock had given way to another surge of adrenaline, and I was prepared to wring his perverted little neck if he charged me, but he quickly thought better of it, and the pair resumed their normal nighttime routine, waddling and quacking in an awkward zigzag line back toward the door of the coop. From there they rushed into the shadows in the corner of their coop, where I imagine they either resumed their incestual gay affair or else resigned themselves to wait till morning while plotting their next cross-species sexual defilement.

May 1 Our Gay Ducks