Nunani: Duck pancake (Part one)

RACHEL ATTITUQ QITSUALIK

It was my first year back from residential school — the first year that I actually got to live with my family after being away for so long. There were new experiences, such as learning how to deal with siblings who had sprung up in my absence, creating new family dynamics. It was all very exciting, but often-times confusing.

In residential school, I had lived with a couple of hundred children roughly my age. At home, I got to have a little sister. She was two years younger than me and cute as a button. While I often thought she didn’t “get it” regarding a lot of things, you could tell she was working hard at it. Every year, she grew taller and smarter.

My father was a terrific hunter, but he was also a minister at that time. We lived in a little wooden house that he had built as an Anglican mission house, and all three of us sisters slept on a bed-platform. We were close to the coal-burning stove, so it was quite warm and cozy. My pet lemming had his nest behind the cooking stove, and would come out to greet me every morning. It was a very civil lemming.

As children, we were always bringing home animals. When we weren’t, my father was bringing them to us, as in the case of my pet snowy owl (which wasn’t as much fun as you might think — it just stared, rotated its neck, and demanded food). There were always boxes for various living creatures tucked away in odd corners.

And there was my sister’s pet duckling. It was a loveable ball of fluffy down, which “peep-peep”-ed day and night. It would only eat bread soaked in milk, and never grew very big. I think it was missing something in its diet, something we were not providing. But it seemed happy enough, following us around everywhere we went.

One autumn day, we brought in some much more robust, well-grown ducklings that we had found near a lake. Being wild, they pooped all over the house, quickly becoming unpopular — especially when they peeped louder than the still-tiny original duckling.

My little sister was greatly alarmed, concerned that the bigger ducklings would conspire to eat her duckling in the middle of the night. We tried explaining to her that they wouldn’t, even if they could. But she would not be swayed in her opinion, and one night insisted on taking her little duckling to bed with her, to keep it safe.

I’m not quite sure how to best describe what happened, so I’ll state it plainly: The duckling was as flat as a pancake the next morning. She had rolled over her pet in the night, sleeping on top of it.

Now, I know it’s evil, but I have to admit that, between the expression of horror on my sister’s face, and the look of that utterly flattened duck, the comedy of it all just got to me. I forced myself to turn away, to pretend to be coughing or sneezing.

As much as I hated myself, I couldn’t stop laughing. And I know I wasn’t alone, because even my older sister was turning away — you could see her shoulders shuddering with her giggles. My little sister only stood there, emitting a plaintive, “Wahhhh!”

We gave it a burial in a shoe box lined with facial tissue, and a few flowers. To this day, I don’t know the fate of the other ducks. I heard that my pet owl was caught by a hunter shortly after I released it to the wild, so it probably ended up as dog food.

In many ways, having a lot of animals as pets is a good learning experience. Pets teach us, and continually remind us, of the differences and similarities between other species and ourselves. Such an experience helps us to understand our own nature. Witnessing their various needs, various lives, various deaths, we learn to contemplate our own.

Ironically, while surrounded by dogs, Inuit have not traditionally regarded dogs as pets, since dogs have been reserved for work. It seems Inuit have always loved having pets, but these are generally “non-useful” animals, stumbled upon out while on the land.

(Continued next week.)