Our meetinghouse sits on ten acres of land, half of it wooded. Early one spring, as I walked down the meetinghouse lane on my way to the office, I saw a duck waddle out of the woods and across the lawn. While ducks often fly over the premises, it is unusual to see one gadding about on the ground.

    The next Sunday we held an Easter egg hunt for the children in our congregation. Twenty screaming children were loosed on the grounds in search of eggs. The duck emerged from the woods, cunous about this human invasion. Her eyes were bugged out, her duck walk slow and tentative. A toddler spied her nest of eggs and wobbled in her direction. The duck rocketed back to her nest, her feathers raised and ruffled.

    We gathered around. Duck eggs — what a surprise! Smack-dab in the heart of the city, four off-white eggs tucked inside a hollowed beech tree. It brought out the naturalist in us. We wracked our brains, straining to recall everything we’d ever heard about duck eggs.

    One of our members is Korean. “In Korea, they eat duck eggs,” she told us. The children gaped at her, horrified at that revelation.

    “They also eat dogs,” she said. The children looked around for their mothers. This was not the kind of cultural exchange we had hoped for when she began attending our Quaker meeting.

    The toddler boy had touched one of the eggs.

    “We might as well destroy those eggs,” one man said. “Once the mother smells that human scent, she’ll abandon the whole lot of them.”

    I had read somewhere that birds do that, though I wasn’t sure it was true. We thought about that for a while but decided against it when no volunteer stepped forward to do the squashing. This is the problem with pastoring a bunch of Quaker pacifists. We can’t agree whether or not to set mousetraps in the meetinghouse.

...if that’s true for us, then why not for ducks?

    Before long, the theological ramifications were being debated. The man who had suggested destroying the eggs pointed out that God has given us dominion over the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. A woman quoted the Bible about how God has known us since we were in our mothers’ wombs, and if that’s true for us, then why not for ducks?

    “But do ducks have wombs?” someone asked. We weren’t sure.

    We looked around for Mac. Mac attends our meeting and knows a great deal about nature. He is a self-taught expert on a range of topics, from duck wombs to water heaters. Mac told us to leave the duck and her eggs alone. He said that sometimes you just have to trust a duck to do the right thing.

    The next morning the duck peered at me from the woods. In midweek I went to check on the eggs. One was missing. Raccoon, I thought to myself. The next day I checked the eggs again. They were gone. Fragments of shell littered the ground around the nest. I talked with Mac about it. He thought maybe the eggs had hatched and the mother had spirited her ducklings away. I found myself wishing it were true. In the short week I’d known the duck, I’d grown fond of her. That night I prayed for her and her young brood. I’d never prayed for a duck before, though I once beseeched the Lord on behalf of a schnauzer.

    I didn’t tell anyone I had prayed for the duck. My theological reputation is already shaky. But I don’t think it’s far-fetched to believe that the God who fusses over us extends the same tender consideration to birds of the air and beasts of the field. Remember how Jesus pointed out God’s care for dime-a-dozen birds? And if that’s true for birds, then it’s doubly true for ducks and cats and dogs. Except maybe for poodles, which are proof positive that not everything in creation has a purpose.

From the book Front Porch Tales, by Philip Gulley. © 1997 by Multnomah Pub., used by permission.

Title: "Consider the Birds"
Author: Philip Gulley
Publication Date: May 24, 2001

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