Fowl Weather by Bob Tarte

the fires of his increasing rage, and his emotion ignited mine.
    The light from a single overhead bulb gave the barn a theatrical ambience. While the other birds probably didn’t as much as glance up from their food dishes, I imagined that a gallery of hens perched on the stanchions and ducks settled in the straw watched us like the patrons of a cockfight. Both of our standings were at stake. Victor kept coming at me, and I kept pushing him back. Our conflict had begun as a struggle for dominance, more ritual than reality; but from the escalating intensity of Victor’s lunges, I saw that he was now protecting himself from a perceived threat to his safety. And he had read my anger correctly. I would just as soon have grabbed him by the throat if I thought that it would stop him.
    The whole time our fight was taking place, a tiny voice in the background clamored against the clatter. At first, I easily blocked it out. My reptile brain generated red noise as I focused on avoiding getting bitten. But finally the words came through with moral clarity. The voice asked,
Do you realize you’re having a shoving match with a duck?
    I’m not thinking right,
I answered.
Since my father died, I’ve gotten as nutty as Eileen. And, by the way, have we been introduced?
    Interrupting my internal dialogue, Victor came at me from across the floor. I lowered the broom and backed away. He surprised me by breaking off the charge, contenting himself with panting to the air, wagging his tail, and opening and closing his beak. I couldn’t tell if Victor was dancing a victory dance, but somehow I didn’t think so. To my left, Hamilton started hissing, but he bypassed me, waddling up to my opponent and joining him in an elevation of snaking necks.
    I loved these ducks. That’s what bothered me so much. For ten years, I had lived closely with animals. I didn’t expect them to act like people and was frequently happy that they couldn’t if they tried. I was patient with them. Guilty about the whole idea of confinement and control, I did my best never to flaunt my advantages of holding the keys to the larder and the cage. Despite my oodles of empathy for them, it had taken precious little to turn me into Elaine’s cousin Elmo.
    â€œSorry,” I told Victor, who held his spot in the middle of the floor. “Sorry,” I said to the hens and ducks who had witnessed my equivalent of a panting-and-hissing display.
    On my way back to the house, I found Linda inside the backyard duck pen. She had set up a plastic chair next to the door and was feeding Lulu dandelion leaves at the end of an outstretched arm. The other ducks stayed away. Goose sisters Liza and Hailey were too shy to accept the food from her hand but bold enough to nibble the belt loops of her jumper. Above the murmur of goose voices I heard Linda singing, “Oh, Dear, What Could the Matter Be.” Everyone seemed happy, and I suspected that the barn birds had already dismissed the kind of squabble that probably occurred among the Muscovies every day. But I was so keyed up, I half wished Eileen would call and sap my nervous energy with a few
peewee
s.
    A FOUR-YEAR-OLD Chinese girl met us in the foyer of the Chinese buffet in Ionia and asked us with grave formality, “Would you like smoking or nonsmoking?”
    Linda’s back trouble prevented her from sitting for any length of time, so we usually couldn’t eat at a restaurant unless a waitress on roller skates whisked our orders to us as soon as we walked in the door. Buffets were a different matter, since we never had to wait for our food. Along with the expected Chinese dishes, the Peking Happiness surprised the diner with such Cantonese delights as squash, corn on the cob, pepperoni pizza, ham-and-cheese-stuffed mushroom caps, French-fried onion rings, and an inspired sushi roll that substituted a plug of hot dog or dill pickle for the anticipated shrimp or yellowfin