In Memoriam

Goodbye, feathered friends!

It was but a mere week ago that we would open our doors to the rowdy quack-quacking of the family of ducks that lived in the marsh out front. Wild they were, the types you'd see with jewel-green feathers, but not wild enough to resist the day-old bread we'd toss them. The ducks developed such a liking for the dry baguette that they would have given those dogs in Pavlov's experiments stiff competition.

Every morning it was like clockwork. Pierre, crumbly offering in his hands, would come out and whistle a high note. Three short bursts, and the five canards would come paddling, tracing a swift diagonal line from where they stayed on the other end of the marsh to where our terrace ended. Voila! Breakfast is served.

Now there is only silence. We have come to accept that the quacking came to an end when the gunshots began. For a period of three days, from the left of the property, where the marsh connects to other bodies of water that the ducks no doubt fished, we kept hearing loud blasts. It was hunting season.

Our fowls have fallen. I imagine them now, stripped of feathers and webbed feet, swimming in bile, digesting in some fat Frenchman's gut. Their only consolation the fact that pieces of their beloved bread are no doubt being digested along with them.

I make my statement now: I protest the violence in France.

P.S. I know. I am too flippant. France burns, and I make a joke. What do I, an immigrant of less than six months, make of the violence in the cities? I make of them many things. Tonight ends my mourning for the duckies, tomorrow I write more.