Here’s an interesting thing about becoming a full-bore feminist: it’s changed my duck feeding habits. Seriously. Female birds tend to be pretty plain, and they’re not usually aggressive show-offs like the males. Before I started getting seriously into feminism, I just kind of ignored them. The boys were prettier. The girls were boring.
Then I found out male mallards are disgusting little rapists, which made them less pretty. I started paying more attention to how they treated their lady friends. Then I started paying attention to the girls. I sympathized with them. Poor things, living in a world where they had to have dudes around, but getting attacked by various dudes so often that they developed special reproductive tracts so that at least their rapists wouldn’t end up fertilizing their eggs. That’s some seriously fucked up shit, there, nature. If I’d still believed in God when I found this out, he and I would’ve have had a Talk.
Around the time I was learning about duck sexual assault, I became a feminist (the two may or may not be related). I started caring about my fellow women a lot more. This has extended to the animal kingdom. Back when I wasn’t a feminist and fed ducks, I’d just toss the stuff out and let whoever grab the grub. I didn’t pay so much attention to who was getting what, and of course my eyes were all for those pretty mallard boys.
Since feminism, though, I’ve noticed how the boys crowd out the girls for the foodstuffs, and I’ve made a point of not letting them get away with it. I make sure the girls get their fair share. And I’ve learned some things about them. The girls are much more adorable than the boys, for one thing. They’ll stand there quietly with the cutest “May I please have a bit?” expressions. They’re not as ostentatious, but they’re beautiful, too. Look at the detail of these feathers, that lovely pattern of lighter and darker browns, the brilliant blue stripe.
And they’re good at catch. A few of the girls I had surrounding me were really adept at snagging food right out of the air.
Aren’t they wonderful?
The male mallards are more bold. But I am a feminazi, so I can get them to bow down to me.
Some days, the boys all behave. But on others, they get pushy. Some of them are outright assholes. They run roughshod over the ladies, but do seem to treat each other worse. Food fights abound sometimes.
B and I try not to reward the mean ones. It’s pretty easy to toss food where the timid ones get more. I just love how excited they get when they see we’ve got bags of the good stuff. The whole path fills with excited duckies, and some get so eager they fly right over.
They’re so adorable with that waddling run, and the way they crowd around B clamoring for their vittles is adorbs. And most of them don’t fight.
In the end, everybody got a fair bit. Thanks, feminism!
This post makes me miss my ducks. I had five khaki campbell females, two dark rouen females, and a khaki campbell male. One of the dark rouen females thought she was a cat and used to demand lap space and skritches.
Those blue wing feathers are, oddly enough, called the speculum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculum_feathers
You just know that someone will (if it hasn’t happened already) twist this around into how this is proof that feminism’s goal is the extermination of all males of every species on the planet via willful and malicious deprivation of necessary resources.
I live right next to a pond, where the dog gets walked twice a day, so get daily exposure to a variety of water fowl. Male mallards are assholes, but swans are the BIGGEST assholes EVER. Last year, I watched a swan methodically chase down and drown a whole clutch of goslings, in spite of vigorous defense by the geese parents. Geese are okay, though. I only feed the geese and the moorhens now; they are civilised critters.