Fuzzleduck By Bob Cork

Once in a while situations come up where we are suddenly called upon to be courageous. That is how I remember my fight to save Fuzzleduck on the Farmington River in Connecticut. Our battle zone was the calm stretch of water through Tobacco Valley, where the river is clear, shallow, and 75 feet wide, where golf balls are the greatest hazards for people in little boats. Farmington River ducks learn to fly in heavy traffic of hang gliders, hot-air balloons, and radio-controlled model airplanes buzzing like bionic mosquitoes. That Sunday in May, small creatures, wary of red plastic rental canoes and pipe-smoking fly fishermen in Old Towns, watched my yellow kayak as I paddled five miles upstream. I laughed at squirrels playing on twisted roots exposed by erosion and at turtles sliding off logs as I came near. Then I noticed, in shadows under leafy branches, a peculiar shape. "It must be a leaf," I thought, "or a floating clump of grass." I was certain it could not be what it looked like, a little duck, yellow and black and lonely. The "leaf" floated out of the shadows. It had soft sprouts of feathers, a small head, a tiny beak. It peeped. I expected a Mallard hen to appear, then to fly upstream, flapping apparently injured wings on the water, trying to lure me away. But Mother did not come. The duckling was an orphan. I remembered, on my grandfather's farm when I was very young, watching a cheeping yellow chick run under the fence of a pig pen, then under the snout of a big and hungry hog. I remembered the crunch of teeth on tiny bones that cracked like pretzels. "Maybe," I thought, "I can catch it and it will stay in the bottom of my kayak. I can take it to the brood of Mallards I saw under the golf cart bridge downstream. I can't leave it here to be crunched and swallowed by a snapping turtle or northern pike." I slipped my kayak alongside the duckling, reached down and touched soft feathers, but then it peeped and swam away, fuzzy wings flipping furiously, feet churning like swizzle sticks. "Fuzzy wings, swizzle sticks, Fuzzleduck," I thought. The frenzy imitated matronly subterfuge so skillfully that I decided Fuzzleduck must be female. I tried several times to glide up beside Fuzzleduck, but she would not be saved, not knowing she needed that. I regretted my inability to quack like Howard Houser at the Seymour Sport Shop. "Okay," I decided in thought. "I'll go up to the sand bar, rest a while, eat my lunch, and when I come back, if you're still around, you may be tired and more willing to be rescued." So I rested, ate my sandwich and apple, let my aging body recover from sun and strain, then paddled downstream, looking for Fuzzleduck. She was riding a riffle in the middle of the river. My boat slid over a rock, leaving a streak of yellow paint. I reached for Fuzzleduck, but she fuzzled away, obviously frightened. After twenty minutes I accepted failure. Besides, I was anxious to get home for a shower and a nap. Then I remembered the landing net on my head, a net disguised as a Chicago Bears cap my sister had sent for my 50th birthday. I figured the cap would regain its shape after getting dunked. My target, meanwhile, was floating defiantly in the middle of the river. I caught the current of the channel and drifted down on Fuzzleduck, the Bears cap in my left hand. Quickly I stretched, lifting the cap over Fuzzleduck. She started to squirt out of the trap, so I stretched further. The cap went over the clump of feather sprouts, but because of the extra reach I also fell out of my kayak and was suddenly swimming. I came up sputtering, with a duckling in my cap, the bill in my hand, and my thumb hooking the expansion strap. She was caught! I retrieved my paddle, emptied my boat on a sandbar, then sat in it again, with Fuzzleduck between my legs. She fuzzled under the footrest, forward into steerage, peeping in the dark. Approaching the golf-cart bridge, I saw ducklings in brush along the shore, with Mother on duty. I beached on the other bank, lifted the bow and waited for Fuzzleduck to slide down the chute. She had apparently found footing. Again I wished that I could quack like Howard Houser. Flooding the boat with water and tipping it again, I plucked Fuzzleduck from the surf in the cockpit, then sidestroked to the middle of the river and set her free. Fuzzleduck sat there, suprised to be in the bright sun. Then she heard and saw the other ducklings, and fuzzled to her new home and family. The triumphant theme from "Chariots of Fire" was playing in my head with full orchestra, until a golfer on the bridge reduced me quickly from hero to zero. "Quit teasing the ducks," he said. I quacked a reply that would have made Howard Houser proud. My quacking startled Fuzzleduck's new mother, so she flapped and splashed downstream ahead of me, acting like easy prey. I paddled after her until she lifted off the water and flew over the golf course, back to Fuzzleduck and friends. I encouraged Mother to drop a little something on the golfer who had insulted me. After my shower and before my nap that Sunday afternoon I called Howard Houser, told him of the adventure, and asked if he would give me quacking lessons. Howard said I was nuts. Then I called my brother in California, who tried, on our grandfather's farm, when I was seven and he was nine, to rescue the chick with his Daisy air rifle. The BB's bounced off the hog and she did not cough up the chick. I told my brother that I remembered being proud of the way he stood tall and took that whipping from our grandfather. My brother said he did not recall that pride was where he felt the pain, but he did remember that I was the one who told our grandfather about the hungry hog, the cheeping chick, and the rescue attempt. Then my brother, who plays golf, led me to believe he agreed with Howard Houser's diagnosis of my mental condition. I quacked and hung up the phone. Singularly concerned and thankful for the survival of Fuzzleduck, I fuzzled off to bed. # # #

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