Here’s a story for you.
Last night, as I was winding things up at my desk and getting ready for bed, I heard the unsettling sound of footsteps outside my window. This wasn’t the window facing the parking lot; it was the one overlooking the narrow space between my building and the house next door — a space where there’s nothing but a concrete sluiceway for rainwater. This isn’t part of a walkway of any kind. There’s no path in back of my apartment. Once in a great while kids will clamber through that ditch — kids will explore any nook or cranny of a city — and now and then a utility employee or maintenance man will be there. But no one should have been out there at 12:30 a.m. on a Sunday night.
I cocked my head, listening. It sounded for all the world like the footsteps of someone trudging along in the shallow water of that concrete trough. The splashing started at the back of my building, passed my locked, curtained window, and stopped at the front corner, no more than ten feet from my chair, at a point where there’s access from the ditch to my narrow verandah, outside my front window, also locked and curtained. I imagined a prowler lurking just beyond the window at my left elbow. In Japan, that would be highly unlikely; and whoever it was had made no effort to be quiet when splashing through the water. But still, it was baffling.
After a few minutes, there were no further sounds, and I didn’t have the sense of anyone skulking about, so I finished what I was doing and went to bed.
At about 6:10 a.m., my alarm clock rang for the first day of my second semester — yes, today was back to school for me. I took my shower, got ready, and as I was munching on a bread roll, I remembered the nightly noises and wondered if there was any evidence of anything I could find outside. So I went out there, and. . . .
You’re thinking of summer camp stories, aren’t you? Dorm room stories? As the police lead the girl away from the car in which she’s been stranded all night after her boyfriend went for help and didn’t return, she looks back at the car, and sees. . . .
No, it wasn’t horrifying, but I solved the mystery. At the end of the flooded part of the sluiceway, on a dry patch in the concrete ditch just behind the trash cage, there was a wild duck.
I knew at once that I’d heard the duck splashing through the water. I also knew, since it was still here and wasn’t swooping away from me as I peered down at it, that the duck had some kind of problem. It must be either sick or injured. It was just sitting there, wings folded, and looking quite alert. When I approached, it took a deep breath and shifted as if it wanted to fly away but couldn’t. I had to catch my bus for the university, so all I could do for the moment was break off some pieces of my bread roll and toss them down within easy reach. I broke off a dozen little bite-sized pieces, wished the duck well, and went to work. (It was making no move to eat the bread.)
I had 11 students in the pre-med English class: 9 boys, 2 girls.
When I got home, the duck was still there — still alert, but didn’t seem to have touched any of the bread. Although there was water in the ditch behind the duck, I thought it might be too shallow for the duck to drink (I was thinking of that Aesop fable about how the fox serves soup in the flat, shallow bowls, and the poor crane or stork can’t drink any of it with his long bill.) So I filled a paper bowl with tap water (single guys usually have paper dishes on hand) and put that down in front of the duck. It made no attempt to drink.
I worried about the duck through the afternoon as I was preparing lessons, wishing I had some better way to help it. It was in a sheltered place, but if it wasn’t flying away and wasn’t eating or drinking, things weren’t looking good. At one point I heard some schoolkids talking about the duck, but they moved along and didn’t bother it.
Finally, toward dusk, it occurred to me to go down the street and talk to a veterinarian I know. At the worst, I figured, he would just shake his head and tell me there wasn’t much we could do for a wild animal. But when I explained the situation to him, he said there is an agency in Niigata that helps injured birds. He said if I could manage to bring the duck in, he would call the Yachyou Kyoukai (Wild Bird Organization), and we could turn the duck over to them.
So I hurried home (it was now pitch-black again in the sluice ditch). Just as I came up my street, I saw my neighbor walking his two bulldogs. [I’ve actually written about him once before on this blog, long ago. Remember?] I prayed they wouldn’t devour the poor bird just as help was on the way. They sniffed and grunted around the trash cage; I think they had some inkling that a juicy bird was there, but they never figured out quite where. I exchanged good evenings with my neighbor, and he was probably wondering why I was out killing time beside my trash cage. When they’d all moved up the street, the two dogs huffing and grunting, I raced inside and hunted through my boxes.
The four or five little ones I have from Amazon.com were all a bit too small; they would have put a crick in the duck’s neck. Fortunately, I’d just bought a box of typing paper. Paper is one thing I use a lot of (conservatively, mind you — I print on both sides whenever humanly possible), so I buy it in bulk: a box of five bundles, each with 500 sheets. A box that holds 2,500 sheets of typing paper is quite adequately duck-sized.
I squinted through the darkness until I relocated the duck. He was still sitting up and seemed aware, but he was no longer squirming when I got close — he seemed a lot weaker. I was able to set the box over him upside down, slide the lid underneath him, and gently roll it until he was inside with the lid on top. The duck moved around a little in the box as I was carrying it back to the vet’s, which seemed hopeful. (But I was wishing I’d thought of the vet hours earlier.)
At the vet’s, the duck was still sitting up and looking around, but unable to fly or walk. The vet stretched out his wings one by one, and they didn’t seem to be broken. His legs seemed okay. There was a small, bloody patch on his chest or stomach. The vet thinks he may have been attacked by a crow or a cat — or possibly ran into something in flight. Anyway, the vet was going to try feeding him and giving him water, using an eyedropper if necessary. The Yachyou Kyoukai apparently is active only on Wednesdays and Fridays, so the vet will be taking care of the duck tomorrow. I had to fill out a form with my name, address, and telephone number, explaining where I’d found the duck and what its condition was. And I received a pin from the Wild Bird Organization for being a “friend of wild birds.”
I don’t know if the duck will survive or not. I wish I’d acted more quickly. But at least he’s out of the sluice ditch and away from the cats, dogs, and curious kids.
And that’s the adventure of October 5th (which, by the way, is the anniversary of the day I first came to Japan back in 1988).
[Addition on October 8th: Today I stopped by the vet’s to ask about the duck. I went with considerable trepidation, but I could tell by his face the instant he saw me that he had good news. He reported that the duck was safely turned over to the Wild Bird Organization on Tuesday. His own opinion is that the duck will make a full recovery and will soon be back in the wild. I was surprised and quite relieved — the way the duck had been declining so quickly on Monday, I was afraid it would expire that night, before the vet could turn it over to the bird people. The vet told me when he handed it over, the duck was beating its wings and full of energy — behavior it wasn’t exhibiting at all the first day! I guess a night indoors did the bird a world of good.
So the prognosis sounds excellent! Thank you to all who have been following this little drama with concern and good wishes.
The duck is doing so well that I’ll probably be hearing from its lawyer for ab-duck-ting his client, who was simply relaxing in the gutter . . . and the vet will be mentioned in the lawsuit, that the duck has pronounced him a quack. . . .] {Yes, I just rang up about a dollar in the Pun Fund.}
The invitation for those scary opening lines is still open (see previous post)!
Marquee Movies says: 
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