She lay crumpled in a shallow grave.

When you find a duck foot on your doorstep, you know the day has taken a turn.

And I had a feeling I knew the duck who belonged to that foot.

Alas, this foot was not the remnant of some foreign soup discarded by a construction worker laboring to expand our neighbor’s real estate empire. No, this was murder.

Yo-Mama had come to my attention during my yesteryear mania to buy every duck this side of the county.

In fact, before I stopped scrolling to see Yo-Mama’s picture staring back at me from Craigslist, I had driven an hour each way to pick up a runty litter of Khaki Campbell ducklings in Livingston.

If you’ve ever heard of this East Texas weekend destination, it’s probably because of Lake Livingston — distinguished as the second-largest lake wholly contained within the borders of Texas.

(Or you’ve heard of Naskila Gaming, the casino the Alabama-Coushatta Tribe won in a lawsuit. Okay, they won the right to continue operating the casino. But that’s less interesting… I can’t even believe I’m writing this detailed explanation when I pride myself in exaggeration and outright make-believe.)

I read the tragic tale of Yo-Mama’s siblings being ravaged by predators. She alone survived. Ducks are social creatures, and if left by themselves, become sorrowful unto death.

So I sprang into action and answered the listing for the “white Pecan duck.” I already had three Pekins (I didn’t have the heart or snobbishness to correct the seller), so I thought it would be simple to add another to my growing flock.

From the beginning, something seemed wrong with Yo-Mama.

Maybe, I thought, it was her weight. She was bigger than my other ducks and had a more pronounced waddle.

A few months later, I discovered she had bumblefoot. This is an infection ducks and chickens get from cutting their feet on sharp objects.

I watched the videos, reviewed my options, and chose…

Surgery.

I needed to cut out the infected mass.

I’m going to skip through the gory details… Let’s just say, the first surgery ever attempted on DuckYard Farm was unsuccessful.

Enter Everest, our mountainous Great Pyrenees.

She hasn’t quite gotten over the puppyhood urge to grab a duck by its neck, a natural handle if ever there was one.

You can put two and two together. That’s what I did. In fact, it almost appeared that Everest had dug the shallow grave that I found Yo-Mama in.

She is no more.

Yo-Mama leaves behind her flock who constantly left her behind when they escaped under the fence to eat the neighbor’s deer corn:

DuckYard Farm Flock

Unit #1:

Beeblebrox - White Male Crested Pekin (crest is a tuft of hair on top of the duck’s head)

Meat Duck - unnamed male Pekin (that was supposed to go freezer camp a year ago)

Karen - Female White Pekin

Linda - Female Mallard

Diana - Female Silver Welsh Harlequin

Rajah - Female Golden Welsh Harlequin

Unit #2 aka The Khaki Scouts of America

Brownie Downey - Male Khaki Campbell

Zahburbeedah - Female Khaki Campbell

Evatar - Smallest Female Khaki Campbell

? - Female Khaki Campbell (none of us can remember her name…)

And a chicken hen named BlackJack (good ‘ol BlackJack thinks she’s part of the flock… but this fondness is not shared by the ducks).

DadFace Directive: If you want to write about things that people actually read, follow this ridiculously simple — yet profound — formula:

1. Live an intriguing life.

2. Chronicle on each eyepopping thing that happens to you (remember, you can manufacture these amazing things by staging them or by making them up, after all, fiction writing is a thing.)

3. Take these notes and assemble them into your story.

4. Show people.

If you had told me two years ago that I would be performing surgery in the backyard on a duck foot with an Xacto knife… I would have laughed you out of town.

May this be a moral to you.

To make up for getting behind on these letters… I’ll be sending you an email exclusive with an early version of the Surefire Editing Checklist later this week.

Stay tuned…

MomBrain says “Hi!”

—DadFace