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What We Never Saw Coming
The brutal and the merciful…
Sitting on the couch and watching the morning news with hot coffee in our hands, my husband and I heard a startlingly loud thud, and after checking most of the things we thought could have caused the terrible noise… a stewed tomato can falling inside of the pantry…a full bottle of water toppling to another level in the refrigerator… we looked at each other with dread, hoping it wasn’t this. We moved urgently toward the dining room windows facing north into our backyard, and we saw her, a beautiful female duck who laid stunned and still right below the window. She had left a full body imprint on the window — beak, face and wings — and although we didn’t speak it out loud, we both thought she was dying right there below our window.
Aaron was calm; I was not. He looked down through the window at her when suddenly we both observed two male ducks heading in her direction at a pretty good clip. I felt threatened for her, and when one of them started to nudge her aggressively in the face with his beak, I thought he was being cruel. Aaron suggested that I should not judge the situation so quickly, but I didn’t hear him as I raced out back through the kitchen door, and shooed the male ducks away from her. How could they? Her impotent savior, I came to assess her state, and as I got closer, she lifted her head very slowly, and tried to move. I was…
