Behind the Puddle

There was a mallard sitting in the puddle today.

And I mean sitting. For hours. In almost exactly the same spot.

He was there while we watched the usual activity around the puddle. He was there while Judy and Ron stopped by. He was there while conversations happened on the patio and the rest of the world seemed to continue around him.

And every so often, I would look over. Still there. Eventually I asked Brian, “Do you think he’s stuck?” Brian looked toward the puddle with considerably less concern than I had developed and said, “He’s a mallard. They live for muck.” Fair point.

The puddle is especially shallow right now, with plenty of algae and muck, and this little guy had apparently selected one particular patch of it as his place for the day. 

But several hours of watching a duck barely move gives a person plenty of time to develop theories.

Maybe something was wrong with him. Maybe he couldn’t get himself unstuck.

Maybe there was some reason he wasn’t joining the mother mallard and the younger ducks elsewhere on the puddle.

Or, and this became our preferred explanation, perhaps there was a warrant out for his arrest for gosling abandonment and he was deliberately keeping a low profile to avoid the Puddle Police. You have to entertain yourself somehow.

Still, underneath the joking, I really was watching him. He didn’t appear distressed. He was upright. Alert. Just extraordinarily committed to doing absolutely nothing. 

Eventually I decided I needed another opinion. I stood up, pulled out my phone and started taking pictures so I could ask Google whether there might actually be something wrong with our suspiciously stationary mallard.

Apparently that was his cue. After sitting there nearly all day, he simply started swimming. Right through the muck. Off toward the inlet of the puddle. Perfectly fine.  I could almost hear Brian thinking, I told you so.

And as funny as the whole thing was, I realized there was something about this little mallard that felt strangely familiar. I had been watching him through the lens of what I thought he should be doing. 

He should be swimming. He should be exploring. He should be with the other mallards. He should have moved by now. And because he wasn’t doing any of those things, I began wondering whether something was wrong.

But perhaps he wasn’t stuck at all. Perhaps he had simply found a place where he was comfortable enough to stay awhile. There are days when humans do that, too.

Days when we aren’t moving forward in any obvious way. Days when we aren’t participating much. Days when everyone else seems to be going somewhere while we remain exactly where we are.

From the outside, someone might wonder whether we’re stuck. Sometimes we might even wonder ourselves. But stillness and stuckness aren’t necessarily the same thing.

Rest can look like stagnation when we’re accustomed to measuring life by movement. Waiting can look like giving up. Quiet can look like withdrawal. And sometimes doing absolutely nothing for a while is exactly what a living thing needs to do.

Maybe that’s another lesson from behind the puddle: Before deciding that something, or someone, needs to be rescued from where they are, perhaps we can spend a little time simply noticing. Watch. Wait.

Stay curious. Give them the dignity of showing us what they need before deciding for them. Because sometimes the duck really is stuck, and noticing matters. But sometimes he’s perfectly capable of swimming away. He’s just not ready to yet.

And sometimes, as Brian reminded me, he’s a mallard. They live for muck. Although I still haven’t completely dismissed the outstanding warrant theory. 

The Puddle Police investigation remains open.

Update!

And then he came back. Right back to almost exactly where he had spent the day. Apparently, he hadn’t needed rescuing.

He hadn’t been waiting for someone to notice his predicament. He hadn’t been unable to move. He had chosen his spot.

Maybe there is an important difference between staying somewhere because we cannot leave and staying somewhere because, for now, it is where we want to be.

He could leave. He proved it. Then he came back. Perhaps the lesson wasn’t simply that stillness isn’t the same as being stuck. Perhaps it was that choosing to stay is still a choice.

Or perhaps Brian was right from the beginning. He’s a mallard. They live for muck. And apparently this is excellent muck.

The Puddle Police investigation remains open, however. His behavior is becoming increasingly suspicious. That little criminal just improved his own Puddle Story.