When we finally moved into our new house, we were very happy. We fenced off one side of the house as a secure area for the cats, and I built a cat house out of an old window awning, on a base of pavers, with wooden sides and lovely warm boxes inside that the most discerning cat would love to sleep in. Up the back some distance from the house, I fenced off another area under the bushes near the back fence, as a perfect enclosure for a duck. It had shade, greenery, and a secure gate to make sure the lovely paved patio wasn’t decorated with duck poo as soon as our backs were turned.

Of course the cats looked at my construction, flicked their collective tails, and harrumphed off to sleep on our bed. Phyllis sat in her enclosure up the back, glued to the only spot where she could see the back door. The look of reproach on her face made me ashamed of how cruelly we had treated the best duck in the world. Next morning I took down the fence and deposited Phyllis in the cats’ recreation yard, which ran the length of the house and had a door opening into the kitchen.

I went to the produce store for some straw because in all the stories I’d heard, the ducks and the geese all had little beds of straw in their nesting boxes, so I spread the straw in the boxes and showed Phyllis the way in. I even put her on top of the straw, and patted her reassuringly, telling her that all the ducks in stories had nests like these. Phyllis wasn’t impressed. She raised her rear end, showed me what she thought of the cathouse/duckhouse I’d spent hours building and walked outside. And that damn duck never went into the duckhouse again as long as she lived.

Author: Ian Taylor
Country: Australia
True story: Yes
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