Dub Dub - My Pet Duck

I believe it was the spring of my third grade year in elementary school when I found Dub Dub. I was walking home from school by Thurston Pond the way I usually did when I saw this large male mallard duck being attacked by a group of other ducks. I ran over and shooed the ducks aware and made sure he was alright. He looked pretty beaten, and had a lot of ruffled feathers, but otherwise he looked okay. He let me touch him which was really cool. After hanging out with him for a while, I decided it was time to head home. As I started to walk away, Dub Dub followed right behind me. 

He followed me all the way home, so I took him into the back yard which was fenced in, and then showed him to my mom. I told her what happened at the pond, and she said he could stay in the backyard. I originally named him Samson, but that really didn't stick, and my dad nicknamed him Dub Dub after seeing him swimming around in his wheelbarrow. 

Dub Dub very quickly became a part of the family. He would follow me around the backyard like a dog would and he loved playing with me, John, and Carol. He loved chasing the balls whenever we would play football or soccer in the back yard, and he was always trying to help my mom and dad in the garden. I had always wanted a dog, but Dub Dub turned out to be an awesome substitution. 

Since ducks aren't a common pet, we had to learn what to feed him, and how to take care of him. His wings appeared to be fine, but he couldn't fly. I think he was just too big to fly. I wondered if he might have grown up on a farm, and someone just dropped him at the pond. We got him cracked corn and wheat from Hertler Brothers in downtown Ann Arbor. We were worried about what would happen in the winter, but we found out that the only reason ducks migrate south is for food, and often they will stay at private ponds as long as food is provided and not fly south. Dub Dub was able to get under the deck in the backyard, and he made that his home. 

Dub Dub really enjoyed the winters. I would get all dressed up in my winters clothes that included coat, snow pants, boots, hat, and gloves and go out into the snow. Dub Dub and I would build forts in the snow and I would pull him along on the sled. He loved sliding down the snow hills that were made from shoveling the driveway. He followed me everywhere I went, and never took off without me. I have never had a dog that came when called and stayed with me the way Dub Dub did. He even tried to play fetch and other games with us. 

When I was in fourth grade, I wrote a book for a school project, and I included pictures of Dub Dub. It was called "My Friends", and my dad and I worked in the darkroom putting pictures together for the book and I typed out the pages on my dad's old manual typewriter. I colored in a cloth covered binder and taped the pages and pictures to opposing pages in the book. Considering how easy it would be to do something like that today, it was actually a lot of work back then. I turned the book in and got a really good grade on it. Then the teacher had me turn it in for a school competition and I won. I have a picture of me reading my book to Mrs Fowler's first grade class. 

We had Dub Dub for several years. The year that I went to swim camp for two weeks, I came home and Dub Dub was gone. My brother had gotten sick while I was away and he was in the hospital with pneumonia. Dub Dub had food and water, but my parents hadn't been able to pay attention to him. I thought he must have been stolen, but my dad feared he had probably been attacked and carried off by another animal. In any even, I was heartbroken to lose my pet duck who had been so instrumental in keeping me happy through those years.

I had a very difficult time in elementary school. I didn't really have any friends. At the time when I started in school, there was a big push towards mainstreaming children with special needs. Kids would be really cruel to these kids, and having a brother with downs syndrome, I would try to defend them. This made me very unpopular. When I found Dub Dub that day being beat up by the other ducks, I knew exactly how he felt. We shared a bond, and he was the closest friend I had during those years.

When I was just a baby, my parents had a dog. The neighbor kid was messing with the dog through the gate and got bit. I guess his father was a lawyer and threatened to sue my parents if they kept the dog, so my dad had him put down. My dad loved the dog and swore he would never get another one. After I lost Dub Dub, my dad finally changed his mind, and we got a collie names Senta. She was a really good dog, but she didn't come when called, and she couldn't play fetch, so Dub Dub had actually been a better dog. I loved Senta anyway, and from then on my dad always had dogs in the house. 

When I was young, John got sick several times where he had to be hospitalized. He came close to dying a couple of times. My mom explained to me that Downs Syndrome babies don't cry, so their lungs never develop. Any illness that gets in the lungs can easily become pneumonia and progress to a dangerous state.