Story #9: Duck, Duck, Gunner

The ducks were a mistake. Dad would admit this freely, usually while watching them waddle across the yard in a formation that suggested they owned the place, which they essentially did.

He’d bought six Pekin ducks at the feed store because the youngest boy had pointed at them and said “DUCKS” with a volume and enthusiasm that Dad interpreted as a binding purchase order. Mom had said “we don’t need ducks” in the same tone she said “we don’t need another dog” and “we don’t need bees” and “we don’t need to move to Virginia,” which was the tone that meant she already knew she’d lost.

The ducks took to the pond like they’d been waiting for it their whole lives, which they had, because they were ducks. Within a week, they’d claimed the entire body of water and about ten feet of shoreline in every direction. They bathed in it. They ate from it. They slept beside it. They quacked at anything that came near it with the territorial aggression of creatures who weighed four pounds but contained the attitude of forty.

The pond was theirs now.

Everyone accepted this. Everyone except the cows, who still needed to drink from it, and did so while enduring a gauntlet of quacking that Big Donna seemed to find deeply beneath her dignity.

And Gunner.

Gunner loved the pond. He’d loved it before the ducks, back when it was just a big muddy puddle where a puppy could splash and drink and roll in the bank until he was more mud than dog. The pond was one of his top five favorite things on the homestead, right behind food, the boys, Dad’s petting hand, and that one squeaky toy that he’d lost under the barn and still thought about sometimes.

But now the ducks were there. And the ducks did not want Gunner in their pond. And Gunner could not understand why these funny waddling quacking bird-things didn’t want to swim with him.

“Gunner, go get the ducks out of the pond.”

This was Dad’s idea. It was a bad one, and Mom’s face said so, but Dad had a fence to fix and the cows needed water access and the ducks had started chasing the youngest boy, which was technically hilarious but also technically a problem.

Gunner heard “Gunner” and “go” and that was enough. He tore across the yard toward the pond with the focused determination of a dog who had been given a mission by his person and would complete it or die trying, even though he wasn’t entirely clear on what the mission was.

Tiger followed at a distance, hopping onto a fence post that overlooked the pond. Front row seats.

Gunner reached the pond’s edge and stopped. Six ducks floated in the center, arranged in a loose cluster, watching him. The lead duck — a big drake with a chip on his shoulder and an orange bill that always looked like it was sneering — turned to face Gunner head-on.

“BOOF,” Gunner announced.

The ducks quacked back. Not scared quacks. Confrontational quacks. The kind of quacks that said: We see you. We are not impressed. We have been here since 7 AM and we will be here when you are gone.

Gunner charged into the water.

The ducks scattered — but not away. They scattered in a circle around Gunner, which, in hindsight, was clearly a tactical formation. Gunner lunged at the nearest duck. It flapped three feet away. He lunged at the next one. Same result. He spun. The ducks adjusted. He was in the center of a quacking carousel, and every time he moved toward one duck, three others closed ranks behind him.

Gunner paused, chest-deep in the pond, and appeared to have a moment of strategic reflection. His brain, limited as it was, was processing a new concept: the quarry was not running away. The quarry was surrounding him.

Then his Labrador nature took over, and the strategic reflection dissolved into something much simpler: he was in water. Water was good. Swimming was good. Why had he been upset? Everything was wonderful.

Gunner began swimming laps.

Not herding the ducks. Not chasing them. Swimming with them. Long, lazy circles around the pond, his black head cutting through the water like a happy periscope, his tail working as a rudder. The ducks, apparently recognizing that the threat had downgraded itself to a nuisance, fell into formation behind him. One, then two, then all six, bobbing in Gunner’s wake like a flotilla following a very enthusiastic flagship.

From the fence post, Tiger watched a Labrador Retriever swim in a circle with six ducks trailing behind him and wondered, not for the first time, what evolutionary purpose Gunner served.

“What is he doing?” the middle boy asked, appearing at the fence.

“Swimming,” the oldest said.

“With the ducks.”

“He was supposed to chase them out.”

“He was.”

They watched. Gunner completed his eighth lap. The ducks maintained their formation, quacking occasionally in what might have been encouragement or mockery. The lead drake had positioned himself directly behind Gunner, drafting in his wake like a tiny, irritable cyclist.

Dad arrived, fence tool in hand, and took in the scene.

“That,” Dad said, “is not what I asked him to do.”

“He’s vibing with them,” the youngest offered, using a word he’d heard somewhere and deployed with surprising accuracy.

Dad sighed. “He’s vibing with them.”

Tiger jumped down from the fence post and walked to the pond’s edge. He sat. He assessed. He had a plan.

Tiger’s Plan B was simple, elegant, and required zero water contact, because Tiger was a cat and cats don’t do water.

He’d noticed the garden hose coiled near the spigot by the barn. He’d noticed that when Mom used the hose in the garden, the ducks panicked at the spray. He’d noticed that the spigot handle was a lever, not a wheel, which meant a determined paw could operate it.

Tiger walked to the spigot. He jumped up, wrapped both front paws around the lever, and pulled.

The spigot turned. Not all the way — Tiger was strong, but he weighed eleven pounds and the handle was stiff — but enough. A trickle of water pushed through the hose, which lay on the ground in a loose coil pointing generally toward the pond.

Tiger dropped to the ground and picked up the nozzle end of the hose in his mouth. It was heavy and tasted terrible, but sacrifice was required for victory. He dragged it three feet closer to the pond, positioned it, and then went back to the spigot.

This time he got the lever another quarter turn. The trickle became a stream. The hose stiffened. Water shot from the nozzle in an arc that landed — not in the pond, but close enough to spray the near bank.

The ducks saw the spray and immediately lost their collective minds. All six erupted from the water in a flapping, quacking explosion, wings beating the surface, and ran — waddled at maximum speed — toward the barn, where the coop was.

Gunner, suddenly alone in the pond, stopped swimming and looked around with the confusion of someone who has just been abandoned by his entire friend group at a party.

The middle boy saw the whole thing.

“DAD! Tiger turned on the hose! TIGER USED THE HOSE!”

Dad came back around the corner and saw Tiger sitting beside the spigot, which was still dribbling water, grooming a paw with the casual disinterest of a creature who had absolutely, definitely, not just operated plumbing.

“There’s no way,” Dad said.

Tiger didn’t acknowledge the comment.

“He’s a cat.”

Tiger groomed the other paw.

Dad looked at the hose, the spigot, the empty pond, and the ducks waddling into their coop. He looked at Tiger.

“Huh,” he said.

Gunner emerged from the pond reluctantly, shaking off water in a spectacular radius that caught the youngest boy, who shrieked with delight because getting splashed by a wet dog was exactly the kind of thing that made his day.

The ducks were secured. The pond was free. The cows could drink in peace.

Mission accomplished, though not by the team member Dad had assigned it to.

As the family headed back toward the house — Dad shaking his head, the boys debating whether Tiger was a genius or a wizard, Mom asking why the hose was running — Gunner trotted alongside Tiger.

Gunner was wet, happy, and completely unaware that he had failed his assignment. In his mind, he’d had the best morning of his life. He’d swum. He’d made friends. He’d gotten exercise. Everything was perfect.

Tiger walked beside him, dry, superior, and satisfied. He’d solved the problem. He’d done it without getting wet. He’d used a tool, which put him approximately several million years ahead of Gunner on the evolutionary ladder.

They walked together toward the porch — one dripping, one pristine — and settled into their spots. Gunner on the floor, Tiger on Gunner.

The ducks quacked from their coop.

Gunner’s tail wagged.

Tomorrow, he’d go back to the pond. Tomorrow, the ducks would be there. Tomorrow, he’d swim laps with them again, because that was the arrangement now, whether anyone planned it or not.

Tiger knew this. Tiger had already started planning Plan C.

But that was tomorrow’s problem.

Today, there was sun on the porch, and warmth under his belly, and the steady rise and fall of a big black dog who smelled like pond water and didn’t care.