The Breath Between-Life and Death on an Urban Farm

A scream erupts from the duck pen. A quacking scream, if there is such a thing. I am just finishing a zoom counseling appointment, and stick my head out the window to find the reason for the cacophony and what I see stops my blood cold. “Oakley!” I shriek, my pitch rising above the chaos, “The ducks! Save the ducks!”

Outside, there is a mink, and its jaws are fastened around the neck of our lovely Anacona duck, Chestnut. The mink is pulling him greedily, lustily, violently around the pen. Chestnut’s white, glossy feathers are bloodied, his neck limp and drooping off his chest like it is suddenly too heavy. Exhaustion envelops him.

His mate, Sequoia, is wobbling around in an agitated daze, her head and neck also lacerated, and she wears a bloody cap on her head, but she seems a little better off than her mate. There is no doubt he was trying to defend her with his very life, and she is at a loss of what to do.

Oakley is out of the house and in the pen in seconds. He chases the mink, brandishing a board that is lying on the ground, until the mink drops the duck and flees — into the duck house, where Oakley locks him tight.
I go to Chestnut and Sequoia and squat beside them. My heart sinks. I hold my head in my hands, more-or-less paralyzed by the violence of it all, I don’t know how to help. I feel impotent.
Not Oaks, this is where he shines.

Without hesitation he runs to a neighbor’s house and returns with an adult friend, wielding a homemade snare. Together, they work to corner and trap the mink. It seems to be able to disappear and reappear at will, becoming a shadow, becoming a feint, but they are dogged and at last they succeed.
As they pull him free from the dark corners of the hutch, the mink writhes and snaps in their snare that holds him fast around the belly. He hisses and bites at their gloved hands with his sharp, jagged teeth. His body is snake-like and sinewy; all muscle, all fight. I know he is just doing his job, maybe even hoping to feed his young, but at this moment, I feel repulsed.

Oakley and our neighbor put him in a cooler while they confer about a plan. What does one do with a wild mink? We try the police—no help—so the two take the cooler to the far side of the island to release this fiend by the sea.

After the ducks have been attended to, given to a kind neighbor who has the wherewithal to give them the care they need, whatever their prognosis, I go inside and am greeted by the other side of death, life.

Chesnut’s and Sequoia’s eggs, which have been incubating for nearly a month, have hatched. Just yesterday, five little bills nibbled and thrust their way into this world, using all their might and mane. How hard they worked to push themselves out of the shells! When they burst free, they all lie, wet and exhausted on the incubator floor, learning to breathe, to live. Now, at one-day-old, they are already dabbling in their watering tray, letting the water slip down their throats by stretching them to the sky again and again. It is like a dance, like a bow.

I sit on the floor with them and am amazed by the brightness of their spirits. They dart around in a duckling herd, little orange feet thudding across the carpet, bumping against me and each other in a gleeful parade.

Oakley comes in after depositing the mink across the island. He sits beside me and picks up his favorite duckling, Greased Lightning, and they coo and chortle at each other. Oakley’s eyes shine and he lets the duckling nestle under his chin for a little nap. He doesn’t move for fear of waking him.

Such gentleness from a mink wrangler, from a young man on the brink of adulthood. I am thankful for both sides of him.

Life is rich; such violence and such sweetness with barely a breath between.