The Duck

For anyone who might have missed the note I posted on my Facebook page entitled "Does Anyone Want my Duck?" Here it is again, with photos:

So our downstairs neighbor just rang our buzzer (while I'm talking to the bank) and says "do you want a duck?" HUH? Not an every day question you ask your neighbor. I say I'm not sure. My head is racing. "A duck?" I think. A waddling, live one?

He says, we'll it's an organic duck thought you might like it. I can tell he's a bit hurt. I'm confused. I say "well, I guess so." Then he leaves and I finish the phone call.

I decide I better go make amends and figure I can figure out how to cook a duck. Mind you, I'm thinking of a duck from the store.

Oh no. He comes out with a dead duck, feathers, head, wings, feet. He shot it yesterday. Seriously? So then I am standing there telling him I'm really not sure what to do with it (trying to graciously decline this gift). He tells me it is easy, just pluck, cut open and take out the innards. Great. This is just getting better.

"Makes a tasty dish, like." Exact words.

So, like a good neighbor I grab the thing by it's broken and wobbly neck and carry it up to my flat where I say outloud, "what the stink am I supposed to do with this?"

I plop it on the counter. Then think better of it. It probably needs to be refrigerated. So I put it in two grocery bags, sanitize the counter and laugh at all that just transpired.

I really have no idea what to do with the thing. And not only that, I'm not sure I have the stomach to do anything with it.

Please, does anyone (in Aberdeen) want my duck?

Here are some additional thoughts:


--I purposely kept his eyes away from the camera so as not to scare my readers/viewers. 


--He was (is!) so soft! If I wasn't grossed out by him, I might have put my head on him, or stroked him the way I used to stroke my cats when I needed comfort.


--Mark just might get to use some of the feathers for his fly-tying.

--Mark is incredibly adamant I got myself into this mess and I have to get myself out -- without his help! (He self-admittedly is not one big on giving sympathy/empathy.)


--I wish my Grandma lived down the road. Not only would she know what to do, she would show me gladly and willingly! (Grandma, you might be getting a phone call!)


--I am seriously contemplating attempting to do something with this creature that is hanging out in my fridge.


--Tomorrow I will try to take a portrait of me and The Duck. I need that for posterities sake. And my readers need it for hilarities sake.


--I really wish you could see/meet our very Scottish bachelor neighbor (probably in his late 50's, early 60's). He really is kind and he seems to have taken to us. We've helped him out a couple times so I guess that's why he thought to give this to us. I've just never been offered such an unusual gift before. But the great this is, he thought nothing of it being weird.


--Sadly, no one has taken up my offer of a free duck.


--If nothing else, I have a fabulous memory of this day. And probably some of you do too now!