The Other Duck

I have seen two ducks in my career and both ducks merit stories. That’s a story to patient ratio of 1:1, which puts ducks ahead of any other species I have seen more than once. That’s how cool ducks are. I suspect that goats would also generate a high story to patient ratio, but sadly, my career path has taken me well away from goats. More’s the pity.

The first duck was named Puddles, a white farm duck who waddled into the clinic (with his owner) for regular check-ups. His story was in my last collection and it remains one of the most popular. As I said, ducks are cool. This second duck was named Jake, and he was in many ways the opposite of Puddles. While Puddles was supremely relaxed in the clinic, Jake was terrified. While Puddles was surprisingly large, Jake was surprisingly small. And while Puddles was pure plain white, Jake’s feathers were all the shimmering dark green of a mallard’s head while his bill was jet black. Jake was an East Indies duck and he was stunning to behold. I had never seen such a beautiful duck. In fact, I had never imagined such a beautiful duck could exist.

Jake’s owner, Mr. Bolton, was a quiet, polite man about my age. He seemed every bit the average suburban dad, right from the way he dressed (t-shirt, jeans) to what he drove (minivan), until you found out that he had a duck fetish. And I mean fetish in a good way, not in some disturbing way. While other suburban dads tended to their lush backyard lawns or their patio barbecue set-ups, Mr. Bolton had apparently turned his entire backyard into an elaborate duck habitat. He showed me pictures. These ducks had it good. As Jake’s appearance suggested, these were not just any ducks, these were “fancy ducks”. And I mean “fancy” in the technical sense as opposed to just meaning deluxe or elegant. There is, apparently, a whole sub-culture of duck fanciers out there, as there are guinea pig fanciers, pigeon fanciers and goldfish fanciers, and they breed striking looking ducks to qualify as “fancy” in the duck show world. The East Indies duck turns out to have nothing to do with the actual geographic East Indies, but rather was just an exotic name dreamed up by a past duck fancier for his exotic looking creation. Mr. Bolton had several East Indies ducks and also a few Mandarin ducks – eye-catching purple, teal, orange and cream-coloured feathered confections. These seemed tastelessly garish though beside the posh East Indies ducks.

Mr. Bolton had brought Jake to me because the country vet he normally dealt with for his ducks was starting to come across as dismissive and unsympathetic. He apparently viewed Jake and his friends through the livestock lens rather than the pet lens and was not interested in spending the time required for the latter approach. I don’t recall who this vet was, and it’s entirely possible that Mr. Bolton’s assessment was unfair and that he was perhaps being overly sensitive to something the vet said, but regardless, Mr. Bolton wanted to try a pet vet. The fact that I had only seen one duck before didn’t faze him.

After the initial introductions and greetings, I asked Mr. Bolton what his concern with Jake was. Jake was an anxious duck, so he was in a crate on the floor beside his owner, only his dark green head and shining little black eyes visible.

“It’s his penis.”

It was becoming clearer why Mr. Bolton didn’t want to see the country vet about this.

“Oh? What’s wrong with it?”

“Jake’s a great breeder. Very enthusiastic. I think he injured it because it’s really swollen and won’t go back in.”

Sometimes my job is boring and routine, but often it isn’t, and when it isn’t it can take some truly odd turns.

“Ok, well, let’s have a look.”

Mr. Bolton crouched down, opened the crate and very gingerly lifted Jake out, all the while making soft cooing noises. Jake was even more spectacular up close and in person (in duck?) than I had anticipated from the photos. The way the light caught those gleaming emerald feathers was breath-taking, especially contrasted with his jet-black bill, eyes and feet. Those were not the only black parts. His penis was black too and it was hanging down, like a sad little sausage. Normally their penises are corkscrew shaped (no, I’m not making this up), but the swelling had eliminated the twists.

“Oh my,” was the best I could muster. I got a light and a magnifier and had a closer look. Jake was very quiet and didn’t struggle, but he was also very tense. Not surprising I suppose. A swollen black duck penis is probably gross enough for most readers, so I won’t describe it in more detail, but suffice it to say that based on careful inspection of said swollen black duck penis I concluded that poor Jake was suffering from balanitis, which is infection of the penis. “I think it’s infected,” I told Mr. Bolton, “but honestly I don’t know much about this, so let me double check the literature before we decide on a plan.”

I excused myself from the exam room and went into the office where I logged on to the Veterinary Information Network, a subscription service that has a massive database of opinion, data and case reports on every conceivable veterinary scenario. I typed “duck balanitis” into the search bar. Zero hits. Apparently, this was not a conceivable veterinary scenario. I then went to Google. This was a bad idea. I’m so naïve. In any case, I do not recommend you use it for any even vaguely penis related searches. So, I resorted to a more fundamental veterinary tool – extrapolation. If this were a dog, I would use antibiotics and anti-inflammatories and advise the owner on regular gentle cleaning at home. I thought there might be a wacky duck specific angle to consider, but if there was, I had no way of knowing.

A week later Mr. Bolton phoned to let me know that the penis was still enlarged and protruding, but perhaps less so, and Jake seemed happier. I asked him to call again in another week as at that point the meds would be finished. He did, and the report was the same – some improvement, but not cured. I decided to try a different antibiotic and I re-crossed my fingers. To move rapidly to the end of a prolonged and somewhat dull medical story, we went through several rounds of this and the answer was always the same. Eventually Mr. Bolton and I agreed that management of Jake’s balanitis was the best we could hope for. A cure seemed out of reach. Evidently there was some unknowable wacky duck specific angle at play after all. The ultimate solution would have been a phallectomy. I’ll let you work out for yourself what that means. Nobody, including Jake one presumes, thought that that was a good idea. He could no longer be Jake the Drake, stud duck extraordinaire, but he was reasonably happy for the rest of his days. Sometimes reasonably happy is the best we can hope for. Actually, it is often the best we can hope for.