Frankie Had Ducks

Did you hear the one about the little boy and the ducks? We lived on Monroe Street before my parents were divorced. I was about 10 years old. My dad was home for a few days from flying and we were on our way up to see Aunt Virginia and her family. If memory serves me correctly, they lived in the vicinity of Palo Alto, out in the country. Our trip from San Jose took us past many farms and orchards and thru several farming communities. This was before the freeways and urban sprawl, so these areas still existed in the central coast of California. This was in the spring sometime just prior to Easter. As we drove past some farms and farm houses, my dad brought the car to a sudden stop and put the car in reverse and backed up to the driveway of a farmhouse. A large homemade sign sat propped up by a large tree. “EASTER DUCKS AND CHICKS” the sign screamed. My dad got out of the car and went up to the farm house. Evelyn’s and my noses were pressed against the back seat window as we tried to figure out what our dad was doing. When dad returned to the car he had a cardboard box. He opened the back door of the car and put the box on the back seat. Inside the box were two tiny yellow ducklings! Easter was coming and instead of getting stuffed duckies, we got the real things!

When we arrived back home my dad began to make an area for the ducks to live. The area turned out to be our entire back yard. The little ducklings were so cute and we enjoyed playing with them. Mom cautioned us not to hold them too much or too tight or we might smother them. Did I say they were so cute? Only problem … cute doesn’t last long! Soon the cute little ducklings were DUCKS. Stupid ducks. My dad had built a plywood wall to wedge the ducks inside the back yard. Dad had gone to the feed store and purchased duck mash which had to be fed to the ducks every day. Any idea whose job it was to mix the mash with water every morning and feed it to the ducks? My dad was off flying and Evelyn was only 7. Day after day, week after week I would mix the mash and feed it to the ducks. Evelyn and I didn’t play with the ducks anymore. Soon the entire neighborhood knew that Frankie had ducks! Ducks are not quiet little birds. Ducks quack. They quack loudly. They quack loudly at dawn!

The garbage men came on Wednesday mornings. In those days we didn’t put the garbage cans at the curb, but the men came up to our gate, opened it, collected up the garbage, put the cans back and left the gate open. The ducks had figured out a way to get passed the fortress my father had built, so out the open gate they ran. They were in the bushes, in the neighbor’s yards and they were quacking. At 6 AM on Wednesday mornings, and on any other morning the gate was left open, the phone would ring. “Mrs. Pritchard, Frankie’s ducks are in my yard!” Then Mom woke me up and told me to go get the ducks out of Mrs. Lemus’ yard. Have you ever tried to catch a duck that doesn’t want to be caught? I know I have! Have you ever gone to a duck pond to feed the ducks bread? Even those ducks who will come and eat bread out of your hand will not allow you to actually touch or catch them. My ducks didn’t eat bread out of my hand, they ate mash from a bowl! It would take me what seemed like forever to catch those ducks. I would chase them this way and they would run that way. I had to finally herd them into a corner where the house and fence come together. Then I would have to be fast to catch both of them. Once I had the ducks, I took them to the back yard and put them over the fence and tried quickly to block off their escape route, which never stayed blocked. Notice I said quickly? There was a reason I did it quickly. Duck poop stinks and there was lots of duck poop in our back yard. Ask Heidi about poultry poop! You don’t just go pick it up like you do for a puppy. It didn’t take but a few weeks and the backyard my dad was so proud of was destroyed by Huey and Dewy.

One day when I came home from school, my dad was home and mom had dinner in the oven. Smelled so good! I put my stuff down and went to the back yard to do my duty … afternoon feeding of the ducks. When I got to the backyard to get the bowl, I was surprised. The barricade was gone. The bowl was gone. The yard looked half way decent. And the ducks were gone! I ran into the house as fast as my chubby legs would carry me. “Where are the ducks?” is cried. Mom and dad just looked at each other. Then dad explained that he had taken them down to the butcher and we were having roast duck for dinner. He didn’t want us to have Easter pets; he wanted a roasted duck dinner! I cried. Evelyn cried. Then my mother was crying. Needless to say, we didn’t have roast duck for dinner. Mom just took the ducks out of the oven and dumped them into the garbage. Dad apologized and promised us we could get a puppy. That satisfied me! Then we went to a restaurant for dinner. And thus ended the saga of those stupid ducks.

We named her Goldilocks. She was a cute cocker spaniel puppy. My dad had made good on his promise to get us a puppy to make up for duck ala orange. She was blonde and was as loving a puppy that ever was. Evelyn and I fell in love. Now this story should go on at least as long as the duck saga, but it doesn’t. We got Goldilocks and dad left on a flight and would be gone a week. When he got back, Goldilocks had to find a new home. He promised a puppy and came thru. Mom had the puppy for a week and couldn’t take her any more. Thus ended the stay of Goldilocks. Dad promised he would get us a parakeet.

Parakeets are not 2 keets. In our case it was 8. Our parakeets didn’t live in a gilded cage hanging on a stand in the drawing room. Our keets lived in a fortress in the back yard. My dad never did things in a small way; He decided it would be a good avocation to raise parakeets! But before he actually went out and purchased the birds, he built a bird corral in the back yard. As I recall, this cage was about 4 x 8 and tall enough for a grown man to stand in. He built a series of little bird apartments for the parakeets to nest in. Each had a little perch in the front, just below the entrance hole. He had swings for them to swing on; he had tree limbs for them to perch on; and he had designed great feeders so I (you got it – I, Frankie) could easily make sure they had plenty of food and water. It wouldn’t be too hard for the daily chore of insuring our little feathered friends had feed and water.

On the front and sides of the cage my dad hung tarps for me to drop at night and during rain and cold days. Remember parakeets are tropical birds, and San Jose was not a tropical climate. There also an entrance gate in which one could enter to clean the cage. Of course you know who that one was ... the humble author. The cage had to be cleaned weekly. Parakeets are birds. Birds are sort of like poultry. And we have already asked Heidi about poultry poop! One of my jobs was to line the floors of the cage and houses with newspapers to catch the poop and make the task easier. The little apartments were designed so that they could be opened and cleaned as well. It actually was an ingenious little complex for the birds. But, cleaning those cages was never a chore I looked forwards to. And I had to get those birds to the back of the cage so they didn’t get out when I opened the door. I have never figured out if my dad actually planned on breeding parakeets, and I could never tell if we had male or females, or a mix, or which was which. It not as easy as finding out the sex of a puppy!

One day we noticed an extra bird out on the cage. Only this parakeet was on the outside of the cage and not on the inside. And it was not the color of any of our birds. This one was a stray. It must have escaped from its owner and was out flying in the open .. not generally a healthy thing for a domesticated bird to do. Instead of finding food, they usually ended up as food. But this little parakeet was lucky. He found the condo and was visiting. My mother, realizing the danger this little bird was in and figuring someone would be looking for it, went out into the back yard and slowly approached bird and without much effort was able to capture it. It turned out to be very tame. Mom brought the bird into the house and put it in a bird cage we had and gave it food and water.I was given the responsibility of this little bird. With Mom’s help, we got the bird out of the cage and it stayed on my hand. I could hold the bird for a long time and it would peck at my hand. NOW this was much better than a flock of birds in a cage in the backyard! I could actually hold this one and play with it.

One day my Grandmother and Grandfather Barkley were over and I was showing them the bird. My dad, laughingly, told me to tell Grandma and Grandpa what I named the bird. I proudly told them I had named him Pecker because he pecked so much. I would be a few years later before I knew why my grandparents and my parents were laughing so hard that they had tears running down their faces.

Mom, knowing this bird was someone’s lost pet, put an ad in the paper and a few days later a lady form a few blocks away came and picked up Pecker. So we were down to 8 birds again, and had them for several months. Then one day we got rid of the birds and the bird cage in the back yard. I think whoever got the birds also got the cage.Those were the last pets we ever had for many years. Shortly after the birds departed from our lives, our lives would change forever. It was a few weeks later that we moved to Dallas. I would be in high school, back on Monroe Street after my parents' divorce before we got any more pets. Then we got two kittens, Maynard and Thelma, named after a hippie and the Prom Queen on the old Dobie Gillis television show..Thelma died some months after we got her. We think she was poisoned. But Maynard stayed around for many years. I think he was the only pet my mother ever really loved, except, of course, for Lacy. Maynard, died after many years, also poisoned. This time by our next door neighbor. I would not be surprised it he had poisoned Thelma as well. As a kid, those were the succession of my pets. Ducks named after cartoon characters who became dinner, a fairytale cocker; a flock birds not loved enough to even be named, and a hippy cat. What a menagerie!