The Great Duck Debacle

When I was in grade school we had a positive deluge of "thinking" arithmetic problems that went something like this:

John and Mary had twin boys. They decided to drive with their new twins to visit family. The trip usually took 7 hours. John filled the car with 19 gallons of gasoline. How far did they travel?

I never had a clue about any of them. If you are staring bemusedly at the above problem, you know how I felt. So bear with me as I try to explain our great duck debacle. Hopefully, it will make more sense that the math problems.

We went to a nearby duck farmer who grows duck eggs commercially. For obvious reasons he didn't have much use for male ducks. Most he sold to Chinese restaurants in Auckland but he saved out 10 prime ones for us. We bought them and took them to the market garden. They escaped from the market garden. Well, 9 did. One we had already  dispatched to make us a duck dinner.

So here we have 9. Then 2 drowned!! Now we have 7. Dan and Yael had been very busy and had not had time to kill the others so the ducks had pioneered their way up to the pond and had settled in nicely. Several weeks later, Dan and Yael hike up to the pond to dispatch the remaining 7 ducks. Several hours later, they are soaking wet, irritated, and clutching 6 droopy ducks.

These ducks are killed, plucked, and two are cooked. The other 4 are in the freezer. The ducks on the table smell great with my patented orange juice and honey glaze. Strangely, no one seems very hungry. Dan eats corn flakes, Yael pushes the meat around and leaves it on the plate. I (who had carefully not watched when the ducks were killed) ate well. The kids decided they didn't like duck. They never tried it. So I had 2 ducks that I consumed over the next few ducks.

Now if you have done your math, you know that we still have one duck unaccounted for. Sort of. The last any of us ever saw of him, he was waddling purposefully down our driveway headed toward the duck farmer's place. I hope he made it.

Til next time.