So, the publishing of my journal entries paused for a bit. That’s because I had to think for a while about how I was going to write about my entry from August, 11 1996.

It certainly ended up being a defining day in my life. When I was 11, my parents moved out of town at the same time I began homeschool. I grew up in love with animals. I don’t even want to express it as most normal people would do by saying that “I loved” animals, because that doesn’t seem to do justice to my juvenile obsession.

I was head over health with anything that jumped, swam, slithered, crawled or flew.

I did not enjoy them at a distance. All insects needed to be put into jars. Turtles, frogs and toads in aquariums. I wanted to hold birds and pet dogs and play with cats and hold fire flies in darkened rooms. And I did all of these things. I took animals from where-ever I could find them and made them my pets. Often to my mom’s dismay who would repeatedly tell me, “No more bringing snakes in the house!”

In addition to the animals I found in the wild, I aquired the normal regime of the pet store variety: Dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, gerbils, lizards,  and when we moved out of town, ducks.

Ducks, ducks, ducks, ducks, ducks.

One of the best days of my young life was the day my dad took me and my brothers to buy a dozen ducklings. I took a particular liking to the runt of the flock, Quacks. He was the smallest duckling and I took him everywhere. He would sit on my shoulder and my mom would even let me take him in the house. I was as happy as an 11 year old obsessed with animals could be…

…UNTIL!

I was playing with Quacks in our garage when he went behind a box in the corner. When I moved the box he was gone. He had fallen into a small opening that went 20 ft down to the bottom of our foundation. There seemed to be no way save him. He was gone, and what was so torturous about it, was that I could hearn his frightened quacking from somewhere far below.

In hindsight, it was probably just as devestating to my empathetic mom to see me so upset about hearing my beloved Quacks slowly starve to death. My mom did the only thing she could do, she prayed with me and I asked God to somehow rescue Quacks…

That night I couldn’t sleep as I thought about Quacks, hopelessly trapped in the foundation of our home.

My mom had also been thinking of him that night and in the morning my she had an idea. She had had a dream that if we tied a grasshopper onto a fishing line, then maybe we could pull quacks up. I ran to our garden to catch a grasshopper and quickly tied him to a fishing pole line to hopefully dropped it into the deep, dark hole containing quacks.

After some false starts, he swallowed the grasshopper and I pulled him up. Quacks let go just before he reached the light and began to fall, but I plunged my hand into the hole and caught him.

Regardless of whatever religious beliefs or lack-there-of I have today, there are few things in this life greater than the answered prayer of a child. Holding quacks after the rescue, it seemed like the light of the universe was shining upon me, that every ounce of everything had conspired in my favor to save the little duckling that I cherished.

From the Past: 

August 11, 1996 – Age 11

About a week ago we got 12 ducks. I got six. My favorite is quacks. He fell in a whole but we saved him.

From September 12^th’s entry:

My ducks are Lightening, Quacks, Goosy, Scrooge, Donald and Midnight.

From the Present: 

Quacks ending up getting famous in a way. My mom who was a writer wrote the story of Quack which was published in Guidepost Magazine, the scan of which is below if you care to read all about the duckling who defied death, Quacks.

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