There they are, the unlovable six. Quacking for no discernable reason, picking out each others' feathers, acting as if I'm death on two legs. The only reason I have them is to practice herding something. They do lay eggs, though; pleasantly pale-green eggs with the translucence of alabaster. They don't taste as nice as my hens' eggs, perhaps because they are ducks, or perhaps because they don't forage the way my hens do all day; they rarely stir a yard from their wading pool in the shade.

Ducks are not particularly adapted to moving on land. Their feet are soft and easily bruised, they wilt in hot weather, and minute difficulties in terrain loom large to them. Since my only flat land is a gravel turnaround, which would hurt their feet, I thought of taking them down to my neighbor's field, which is flat and only needed to be mowed. But once this was laboriously accomplished, I saw it was still far too rough for my tiny beasts. They could only flounder, over the dry stubble and piles of mown thistles and grass.

I don't have a lawn, because they are hard to justify in a climate where it doesn't rain for six months, and, in my county as many others, the aquifer is being sucked dry to support this alien piece of culture (forty percent of our urban water budget in summer goes to landscaping, mostly lawns). Also, of course, I don't have anywhere to put one. Lawns are good for a few things, though, like soccer, softball, and duck herding. I decided to go trespassing at my local elementary school, now that school was out for summer. Hey, those are my tax dollars watering that lawn, I figured.

The first order of the day was to put the ducks in the dog crate. This was not a simple thing, since they clearly believed hideous duckmonsters lived there. Bonnie and I could not force them in, so I had to corner and catch each flapping duck and shove it in. Bonnie is quite the enthusiastic duck catcher, but since it is, marginally, less traumatic for the ducks to be caught by me, I told her it was my job. However, her turn would come.

I lugged the crate full of ducks down the hill, and put it in my car, along with a bucket, a gallon of water, a portable dog exercise pen, and a bamboo herding cane. Then we all went down to our little mountain community grade school. I parked in front of the chain across the driveway, padlocked for summer, and started unpacking. On my first trip to the lawn, I hooked my shoe on the chain and fell flat on my face on the asphalt. Good start. I had done something excruciating to my knees, but it seemed too pathetic to just go home, so I rose from my bed of pain and finished setting up.

I dumped the ducks out of the crate, inside the ex pen, positioned my dog, and opened the pen. Bad idea. Bonnie was too close, so when she wore to gather up one side of the ducks, the others peeled off in the other direction, and fled for the bushes. She was out of position to cover them all, they scattered, and in less time than it takes to type this, every single duck had disappeared into the impenetrable blackberry thicket which covered the fence.

Oh, how fun herding ducks is, I thought to myself. The one lucky part of this scene was Bonnie, whose very first command as a puppy had been “Find ‘em”. One by one, she located and flushed out each invisible duck, I grabbed it, put in the ex pen, and we went back for the next one. Some of the ducks had gone to ground so thoroughly that they had decided they were dead, and I had to wade into the brambles where they lay limp and destroyed-looking. They perked right back up when returned to their flock, though.

I was determined to have some sort of success, so I got them in their crate again, with difficulty, lugged them far, far, from the bushes, set my dog up a healthy distance away, covering the bushes side, and tried again. This time, everything went as planned, and we fetched the ducks around a bit the way you are supposed to do. Bonnie is a keen and savvy duck dog, probably from all her childhood experience with chickens, which are quite a bit trickier than ducks (although even slower). But the ducks were emotionally and physically melted. After a single little circuit of the field, one, and then another, lay down and refused to move. That was okay, I wasn't doing so great myself. My dog, who could have herded ducks all day without breaking a sweat, was rather disappointed.