WHY A duck? Indeed, why two? That was the question in my mind the other morning as I watched a mallard and his girlfriend waddle down the grassy verge dividing leafy Melville Terrace from whizzier Melville Drive.
Breakfast isn't always this interesting. Usually I listen to the aptly named John Humphrys harumphry at guests while I imbibe energy elixirs and make rash promises to myself to return to bed the minute I'm home – do not pass dinner, do not collect an
other episode of NCIS. It takes all my fortitude not to drown in the shower or fall down while putting on my trousers. Mornings aren't really my moment.
I do try to grab time on my kitchen window seat to gaze at the Meadows. It's comforting seeing the regulars: various dogs who feel like family pets now; ever-renewed bundles of baby lashed into strollers; snakes of kids in school kit heading into the park for a blast of vitamin D and a dose of exercise; the milk delivery truck; and – oh, hello, good thing I'm dressed – once monthly, my window cleaner and his lads, with their ladders and soapy sponges.
A holly tree houses some of the noisiest wildlife. There's a blackbird who warbles lustily at all hours, and what I think are chickadees, whose small size belies their ability to chirp for Scotland. Pigeons there are in abundance, and doves, whose cooing I find deeply unsettling. We get magpies, and many mornings the Meadows is polka-dotted with seagulls.
What we don't get, what I've never seen in my nearly seven year residency, is a pair of ducks contentedly pecking in the grass and waddling east, toward Newington, blithely unaware of the quantity of Chinese takeaway shops lining their path. They captured my imagination and have held it hostage ever since.
I know enough to count my magpies, but what could a brace of ducks portend? Was this a harbinger of apocalypse? A warning that the park was returning to its previous incarnation as the Burgh Loch? Since the loch was drained from east to west, should I be worried that the ducks were progressing back the way?
Research revealed that dreaming about ducks can represent spiritual freedom if they're aloft, and the unconscious if they're swimming. Because they can walk, swim, and fly, they're said to represent flexibility and an ability to blend into a wide range of situations. Travelling the pun route brought me to sitting ducks and ducking the issue. If only it had been a dream, then I might have known where I stood.
In Celtic mythology, ducks symbolise the sun. Archaeologists have found depictions of the tasty multi-taskers flanking a solar wheel and at the ends of the boat carrying the disc of the sun. Fascinating, yes, but it seems a bit over the top, even to the likes of one as prone to overly dramatise the quotidian as myself.
I nearly rang Malcolm Duck to see if he'd lost any mascots, then googled urban ponds and discovered one in Blackford and also Dunsapie Loch. Though I work nearby, the loch slipped my mind when it overheated in all the excitement. Neither is terribly far away, as the duck flies.
I'm hoping they were on a recce, checking out new neighbourhoods. I'd gladly swap boring, useless pigeons for a pair of quackers, and volunteer to keep them in the seeds, grasses, insects and grains that I now know they prefer to the soft lumps of white bread I regularly pinged at them as a kid. They can even use my bathtub – if they promise to leave eggs.
The full article contains 617 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
