Sitting Ducks

By Anonymous 

It’s a black coffee morning. Not just the drink—though that too, tar-thick in a chipped Coat of Arms mug—but the mood of it. The air hangs low, like it hasn’t slept. Clouds press down on the town like a damp towel. Everything smells of wet bark and car exhaust—the kind of weather that turns newspaper soggy in seconds and makes dogs bark for no reason.

From the seawall, you can just make out the bend of the bay through mist and motor-oil shimmer. The tide’s either coming in or going out—hard to tell, the way the water chops. Waves stammer against the break like they’ve forgotten their lines. A southerly wind whispers through Lambton, cold and dumb and mean. It slinks under jackets, up sleeves, into bone.

A cluster of ducks huddles near the boat ramp, where someone’s left breadcrumbs or fried batter or maybe both. They look like they’re waiting. Not anxious—just still. That kind of stillness animals get when they’ve run out of tricks.

I wonder if they’ll find fish today. Or if the fish have gone—taken some invisible back door out of the bay. Packed up their gills and vanished. If that happens, do the ducks follow? Do they fly inland, chase rivers upstream until something bites?

Probably not today. The ocean doesn’t run out of fish in a single afternoon. But it could. I know it could. That’s the kind of morning it is.

Someone behind me coughs—a wet, smoker’s sound—and mutters something about not feeding the birds. I don’t answer. Just flick another crust from the heel of a bakery loaf into the current. A seagull snatches it mid-air and swerves toward the wharf like it’s won a prize.

The ducks blink slowly. One of them shifts, feet paddling without conviction. Another dunks its head. Comes up with nothing.

The ocean looks hungover.

If the ducks lose the fish, there’s always migration. That’s what people say, isn’t it? Survival’s just movement in disguise. I picture them in formation—geese-style, all urgent symmetry—leaving the coast behind. Arrows in the sky over the Hauraki Plains. Flying so high even the rifle guy two paddocks over couldn’t clip them if he tried.

They’d sweep across fields and rooftops and cowshed rows until they found some patch of riverbank still holding silver slivers in its belly. Or they’d keep going—right over the Kaimais, past the pā site, the lookout, the quarry turnoff where we used to smash bottles. Maybe they’d follow the old river, the one with the swing rope and the beer crates nailed into the mud like steps.

I imagine them stopping at my old house.

Not the one in Wellington with the mattress on the floor and condensation dripping from the window frame—but home home. The one with the concrete pool and the rotten trampoline. Mum’s not there anymore. She rents a flat in Auckland now—says she likes the light, though her curtains are always closed. The one time I visited, the hallway smelled like supermarket roses and lemon spray. She made me tea in a mug that used to belong to Dad.

But Dad’s still there. Him and the dog.

Maybe he’d see them from the deck—hundreds of ducks waddling up the lawn like it was their birthright. Maybe he’d leave the gate open and fry a pan of bacon like it was just another Saturday. He’d let them into the house, line up bowls of aviary pellets, show them where the best sun patches fall across the carpet.

The dog—old now, hips like gravel—wouldn’t mind. He’s good with birds. Used to sit under the orange tree and let sparrows land on his back. He’d watch the ducklings like a pensioner watches the evening news. Protective. Tired. When he was young, he chased everything that moved—cars, bikes, the neighbour’s cat. Now he just watches. Like he knows everything that happens is already a rerun.

They’d settle in, I think. Ducks in the pool. Ducks on the washing line. Ducks curled up in my old bed among the soft toys I left behind. The seal with the split seam. The rabbit Mum kept sewing new ears onto, as if that could undo anything. Maybe they’d sleep in the linen cupboard too—tucked between musty flannel sheets and mismatched pillowcases. Nest in Dad’s sock drawer.

Dad would read to them—Clifford the Big Red Dog and old National Geographics. He’d get used to the smell. Start naming them on a whim: Tulla. Beans. James. One would follow him to the letterbox each morning. One would refuse to swim. One would get too attached to the TV remote.

The neighbour wouldn’t like it. Not with his shotgun and his laminated Trespassers Will Be Shot sign nailed to the macrocarpa stump. He’d rattle the fence and grumble about rates and waste and contamination. But the ducks wouldn’t move. And if he set traps, maybe the dog would bark—sharp, insistent—and Dad would finally call the cops. Not because he trusts them, but because he trusts the dog.

Eventually, Dad would give up the car restoration business. Convert the garage into a shelter. Hang a Not For Profit sign on the rusted mailbox. The Council wouldn’t know what to do. Neither would Mum, when she came back years later and saw ducks roosting on her good dining chairs.

She’d say something like, ‘Of course you did.’ Then she’d pour a glass of wine and sit on the porch and let a duckling climb into her lap. My brother would bring his mates over just to see the madness. They’d drink cider, laugh, and take videos.

Maybe the fish would come back, too. Maybe Dad would install some elaborate pump system and repopulate the pool with snapper and flounder and those eels that writhe at the bottom. Maybe he’d teach the ducks to dive again. Rewilding, they’d call it—if it were happening anywhere else.

I’d visit for Christmas and help bury the neighbour’s shotgun under the feijoa tree, next to the dog’s grave. Wrap it in a towel and a poem. Let it rot with all the other metal things we don’t need. The dog’s marker would just be a rock, nothing fancy, his name scratched in with a nail.

I’d tell the ducks they’re safe now. No more guns. No more lost to stubborn men. Just rafters and dust and nest after nest after nest. I’d leave the garage door open so the wind could move through. Let things come and go.

Outside all that—outside imagination—the wind kicks harder. Real rain now. Soft at first, then pressing. My jacket’s too thin, but I don’t move.

A new man yells from further up the wharf.

 ‘Don’t feed them!’ he shouts, louder. ‘You’ll make them dependent!’

I don’t look at him. Just toss the last bit of bread into the tide and watch the birds scramble. They flap and lurch and hiss like it’s the first food they’ve seen in days. One duck is pushed under as another claws onto its back, wings flailing in the shallow chop. It isn’t elegant—barely even duck-like—but something closer to desperation.

The fish might still be out there, hovering just below the surface, invisible and possible. But the ducks don’t know that. And neither do I. I tighten my hood against the cold, watching my breath coil into the grey air. Still, the ducks don’t leave. They never do. They linger in the shallows, waiting for something to change, or return, or reveal itself. 

Sitting ducks.