As autumn settles in, our skies are filled with the sights and sounds of migrating waterfowl returning to their traditional wintering sites to the south. The raucous brays of the mallard, scaup, wigeon, blue-winged teal and merganser fracture the chill air overhead. Hundreds of Canada and Ross' geese, the Snow, the Blue and the Brant arrange themselves in their distinctive chevron formation, sweeping towards the tropics in a stunning display of nature's order. It is a sight that never fails to fill us with a sense of awe.
Chance plays no part in the certainty of migration's annual ritual. It is an instinct, a call that is essential to the inner workings of all migratory birds, as critical to their existence as their wings, their webbed feet, or their natural camouflage. As instincts go, mankind has learned that he can control his own visceral behavior to a certain degree, so that his civility, his concern for the well-being of all creatures upon our earth, can co-exist with his own innate need to hunt and kill these very same creatures. It is a struggle between conscience and impulse, a risky balancing act that is not without its share of bad judgment and tragedy.
Hunting season is upon us. For a few short weeks, our hunters and sportsmen repeat their timeless ritual that serves to keep waterfowl populations in check, and provide food for our families. But this time, there is a dark side. If we are to heed the stories that are reaching us from the woodlands surrounding East Cornpile, the scales are suddenly tilted horribly to the side of tragedy.
Yesterday, veteran hunter and conservationist Virgil “Teefless” Hickey returned from a duck-hunting expedition in the Boggy Hollow area adjacent to Tabaccychaw Pond. A reader of this column for many years, he related his incredible, first-hand tale to me personally. Mr. Hickey’s eyewitness account of the events that took place last Thursday at the confluence of Spitswaller Creek and Hazel’s Pie Swamp drainage culvert provided a chilling insight into the activities of scores of “neo-hunters”, a sinister clan of camping vandals apparently armed with rolls of silver colored, ultra-sticky fabric. This can only be the notorious Duck Tape, sold in plain view at Cheeky’s Hardware, and apparently available even at Pucker’s Drugs ‘n Guns. Teefless (“I losted my teef stoppin’ a pig from guttin’ my duck, and dat’s why dey calls me dat”) told The Spectator yesterday that he and his friends Nosepork Stevens (of Chuckerville) and Leon Toadass (of Gummy Hump Fire District) were hunkered in a blind on Hazel’s Pie near Pecker’s Shed calling pintails from Tabaccychaw, several hundred yards to their left. Their luck had been poor. The ducks were there, that much was certain, but they seemed disinclined to move. Suddenly, a tremendous disturbance behind and to the right of Teefless and his friends destroyed their reverie, and threw the quiet of Boggy Hollow into turmoil.
“Dey isn’t no duck comin’ in dis noise nohow”, Teefless recalls commenting to his companions. Leaving their blind, the three men quickly climbed the shallow berm separating them from the disturbance to investigate. In the clearing beyond the rise, strung between two leafless cottonwood saplings about fifty feet apart, they could see what appeared to be a tight web of mangled silver tape spanning a vertical distance of over twenty feet. “Dat was dat Duck Tape, dat’s what dat was. Dey was a whole load of ducks in dat tape, and couple varmints, and I don’t know what all” completely and inextricably involved in a huge, tangled morass between the two trees, raising a ruckus of deafening proportions. There appeared to be no one else in the area, by Mr. Hickey’s account, so the three men elected to descend the gentle slope and try to assist the trapped animals.
The worst was yet to come.
“Nosepork, he’s jest pluckin’ a possum off some tape, and Leon’s got hisself a mallard, when holy jeez almightly”, explained Mr. Hickey. “Holy man. Here come a whole mess o’ ducks. Twenty, forty ducks, looks like scaups. Fifty, sixty, maybe. Looks like a sempy-five, eighty maybe, rollin’ on in. A whole bunch. Hunnerds. And right behind ‘em comes black labs, two of ‘em, big barkin’ b***hes, six of ‘em with hell on their mind, ten maybe. And a Chesapeake, howlin’ to die, and three-four golden labs. Must be fifty dogs, all barky an’ howly, and all them ducks, they come crashin’ into the tape, and they’s all tangled up. And Grizzly Adams. He’s in there, and the tape’s on his beard, and he’s real mad, hollerin’. Miz Adams too, she’s a looker, an’ she’s hollerin’ too. They’s all tangled up, makin’ just a hell of a racket, and we’s pickin’ ‘em out, me an’ Nosey an’ Leon, doin’ our best.”
The relative remoteness of their location prevented Teefless and his companions from alerting the authorities, and thus the duty of extricating countless creatures from their sticky, silvery prison fell to the resources and wile of Messrs. Hickey, Stevens and Toadass alone. The three of them reportedly rescued over nine hundred ducks, dozens of retrievers, setters and pointers, several indigenous beasts such as opossum, beaver, otter, harbor seal, vole, a visiting meerkat, and three humans. “Mr. Grizzly was real nice. He give me a John Henry back at the cabin”, reported Mr. Hickey. “Miz Adams looked on. I’m pretty sure all dis axially happened, but we was a bit hooped on shine.”
It sounds disturbingly real to me, Mr. Hickey. Where has our civility taken us? Can the average person’s sense of sportsmanship and fair play no longer be counted upon to win the day? Or has our complex, arrogant, intellectually motivated manipulation of our own instincts doomed some of our number to permanently aberrant vandalism? Mr. Hickey’s tale fills me with dread. I, for one, will no longer countenance the use of Duck Tape for any reason. My AMC Gremlin upholstery can simply stay torn.