Bird Tale

What does a chicken and a duck have in common?

During my grade school days one of my favorite game of chance was the chicks and the ducklings lottery. This was the game where you buy a small piece of paper for twenty five cents, wet it with your saliva (it tasted like soap), wait for a number to appear, then match it with the number painted on a piece of plywood. If you had a match, you either win a chick or a duckling. I tried it once, or maybe twice, thrice, who’s counting anyway. I made two matches and I chose a piece of each—a chick and a duck.

I took care of both of them. Placed them in the same cage, fed them in the same feeding bowl and I even put a light bulb to warm them at night. I did not do this for experiment; it was just that it was fun watching two different animals bonding. They grew up together, played a lot together, and they even developed the habit of singing a quacking and a cackling duet. We had a big backyard then. My father loved gardening and whenever he hoed the soil to plant, an earthworm would pop up. The chick would always be there ready to snap at them. The duck would also be there but since his bill was not designed for pecking it could not catch any worm. The funny thing was the duck kept imitating the chick, all the time the only thing it caught with its bill was earth.

Things started to change when the chick matured. It started to roost on the old talisay tree besides our dirty kitchen. Naturally the duck tried to roost with the chick but its webbed feet were not made for grasping branches, it cannot hold on and it kept falling down. The duck had no choice but to sleep under the talisay tree. Things didn’t go well with the chick either for when the duckling started to wade on our fishpond the chick can’t swim with it, it can only watch on the bank and wait for the duck to emerge from the water. Despite the developing behavioral and anatomical changes, their relationship was not affected. They still foraged together, sang together and played together. They are an epitome of inter specie friendship.

I remember an incident with our neighbor Mommy Panyang. Mommy Panyang passed away just a few months ago. She was the mother of my brother’s best friend and one of the gentlest old ladies in the neighborhood.

Momy Panyang was changing her clothes and was wearing only her undies when all of a sudden the chicken and the duck flew through her window, and then there was mayhem. She was shouting my name, throwing anathemas at me, calling on the holy family, and at the same time chasing the dynamic duo with a broom. I don’t know which is funnier a shouting seventy year old lady in her undies chasing a cackling chicken and a quacking duck or cackling chicken and a quacking duck chasing a seventy year old lady in her undies. Of course my father castigated me for the behavior of my pets. I think it was one of the reasons why Mommy Panyang had steel grills installed on her windows. Looking back and since Mommy Panyang is already gone, I hoped she had forgiven me for my irreverence to her.

One day I went home from school and found the chicken with a broken leg, a slingshot hit. I tried to mend the injured leg but the injury was bad. It was really a miracle that it was able to hobble home at all. I can’t help but think of the duck encouraging the chicken or maybe even helping it limped home. The chicken was slaughtered and cooked. My heart was so heavy that I found it very difficult to eat the tinola. I kept thinking of the duck and the effect the chicken’s death would have on it. I love both of them. I was really so stressed and depressed that I can’t even look at the viand. I realized that I was not the only one having difficulty with the tinola. My siblings were also having difficulty chewing and swallowing it. I was touched by their silent sympathies. When I finally had the courage to taste the tinola, I also found it very hard to chew and swallow for the chicken meat was like a rubberized chewing gum (the chicken was a tough leghorn known for their egg laying ability and not for the tenderness of their meat.) This time it was I who felt sympathy for my siblings. After a few days the duck lost weight. It started to waste away and we had no choice but to slaughter and cook it. My mother cooked ginataang adobong pato, the classic Flipino recipe for ducks. Despite a heavy heart I ate the viand.

I had lots of pets. I have had many dogs. I had Turko the giant Peterson chicken, Botvinnik the Albino rat who had sex with black rats, and sometimes I catch glimpses of his mulatto descendants in our kitchen. I have had guinea pigs, hamsters, rabbits, spiders, fishes, etc. All of them I cherished and some even hated but never had I seen friendship between two animals like these two extraordinary birds. It’s a pity I didn’t even took the time to give names to these two noble creatures.