Is This a Duck?

People make mistakes. Sometimes they don’t matter, but they may have consequences ranging from financial loss to emotional pain to loss of life. Most mistakes are small, though, and some of those may become guidelines to life “from now on.” In short, we learn a lesson.

We made lots of mistakes when we moved from town to the country. We really didn’t know the first thing about living in the country. Although both of our fathers had owned farms, in neither case did the landowner live on his land.  Oh, we were naïve!

We had a pond dug close by the creek that runs through the bottom of our property. It rained and the pond filled up. We trudged down the hill to admire it. Dennis remarked that it would be nice to have a duck floating on our pond and the next day bought a white duck. The duck was happy swimming in the pond. It looked good, too.

The pond was far from our house, essentiality in the middle of a woods inhabited by coyotes, raccoons, and other hungry wildlife. The duck didn’t even make it through the first night. When we went down to the pond we found only a bill and two yellow feet.

From then on we avoided buying a duck. In fact, when we are about to decide to change something we ask ourselves, “Is this a duck?”

I still regret that the white duck had to pay the ultimate price for our naivety.

Copyright 2017 by Shirley Domer