I'm housesitting in this huge house right on a canal off the St. John's River in greater Jacksonville. (Although Jacksonville is one city, technically, it is made up of a bazillion little sections that are referred to among those inside Jacksonville the way that Jacksonville and Gainesville and Starke are referred to among those in Tallahasee. I'm in Orange Park, which is one of the South-western-most portions of the city, while there is Middleburg nearby (I think there may be one section of Jax AND an actual town of the same name a few miles below, but I haven't fully figured that out yet) and Southside across the river by the beaches, Westside up North and Northside east of that.. There is no eastside, but east of the base is Mandarin (I guess the Base and a very small section around it are either just in Jacksonville or maybe they fall in Westside to those from Orange Park and Orange Park to those from anywhere else?) and east of that is Southside, and east of that is Jax Beach, Neptune Beach, Amelia Island, and one other beach.. perhaps San Fernandino? That's somewhere nearby. And then there's Mayport. I haven't figured out whether Mayport (and its own little Navy base) is part of Jacksonville or another township altogether.)

But back to the issue at hand:

When I let the dog out this morning, I sat out on the patio to keep an eye on her. It was maybe 63 degrees out and the sun was nice and warm and the sky was beautifully almost-clear, and there was just a little bit of wind over the water..

And then, nearly covering the upper half of the back yard next door, were the Ugly Ducks.

Every time I'm away from FL long enough, I forget about the Ugly Ducks. And I guess I just hadn't seen any since I got here in late October. But there they were, as Ugly as ever, and I'm sure they're still just as protected.

I did a search on Google images to see if I could find something to show you how ugly these ducks really are, and found one picture with a great blog-style "feature" about the Floridian experience as relates to ducks.

http://www.happyscrappy.com/feature16.html

This link will take you to a "Feature #155", even though the link says 16, and it will start out with an idea the writer had, and then a story about ducks in MA. I thought that was especially appropriate since I was born in Boston, and fondly remember the ducks and pond-covered experiences such as he initially mentions. And then we moved to FL, where for the next ten years I saw nothing but the Ugly Ducks, except in pictures and movies. Or brief glimpses when we'd travel elsewhere.

These Ugly Ducks do not grow up to be swans. They are actually not so ugly when they're babies (there were some babies swimming with their mom this morning in the canal, and so I know this from reconfirmed fact), but they grow into these hideous, nasty beasts.

When I was at bootcamp (and I forget if I wrote about this or not), we had an unfortunate incident in which our division was marching back to the barracks from something, with just our male first class RDC with us, and we saw this family of ducks waddling along. They were so cute, and then people started pointing out (even though you're not supposed to speak in formation) that they were even walking across the street using the crosswalk. At bootcamp, signs of life (other than harried recruits and yelling/intimidating RDCs, civilians who make you jealous that they're not suffering and officers who make you feel awkard because you just can't get that whole salute thing down since you're not supposed to look at them there and yet ARE supposed to call them by title) .. signs of life are very rare. Nature is not seen often. Even in the trees there, there aren't so many birds chirping, and you're not really able to stop and look at them, anyway. You spend almost all your time inside, and when you're outside, you're marching (and must be looking straight ahead) or you're running. So we were feeling good about whatever it was we had just done, and we were really enjoying seeing these cute little ducks.

And then a car turned onto this road. You could feel the tension increasing in the ranks. She slowed down, though, and the baby ducks (who were probably in their pre-teen stages of life) made it to the side of the road we were on. The mother was still in the middle, making sure all her babies were safe, and the car sped up. She stopped after running over the mamma duck with her front wheel, and then ran over her again with her back. And she sped away. We recognized her as one of the galley workers who was always in the back, though we weren't sure quite which one. But watching this mother duck be killed, and having to march by her babies who were crying out and looking around for her...

Our RDC and some of the guys from the division managed to almost make the whole situation seem funny later on. When I think of them and what they said, I can still laugh. But retelling the actual scene here wasn't funny at all. Very sad, indeed.

Yet, I was struck this morning with the thought that if someone did hit one of these Ugly Ducks with their car, it wouldn't be nearly so sad, honestly. And I'm a lover of animals and of life, but these are just Bugly. (Bugly, by the way, means Buttocks-Ugly.) And so you don't want to look at them anyway, and they're so aggressive and yet so protected (as endangered species, it is illegal to kill or harm them), that they often fill drive-thrus with their menacing presence and foolish souls throw fries at them out the window which just keeps them around. And then you have to drive very slowly so as not to hit them, but if they feel like sitting around (and they really will plop themselves right down where your tires would otherwise be about to go), you just have to wait. Seriously. Because if you get out of your car to scare them away, they will honk and hiss at you and tell you that you are a silly human who is bound by law not to hurt them, and you happen to be in a very public place and you never know Who might be watching. And thus, they may sit around all they would like, and the cars honking behind you are not nearly as threatening (despite that another peculiarity of FL is the likelihood the person honking at you is also carrying a gun and might even use it) as the honking, hissing Ugly Ducks.

So if one were to ever get run over in my presence, it would be like seeing a squashed cockroach -- nothing I wanna see and it would probably make my stomach turn, but the thing was Ugly to begin with and this just makes it Uglier and stationary.

Ah, the Ugly Ducks.. How nice it was to have forgotten about them.