I have many fond childhood memories, including a few picnics in the bright sunshine by a small pond that culminated in feeding a few scraps to the local ducks, which I found highly amusing and quite idyllic.

In a recent attempt to revisit that time, I bought a loaf of bread and parked next to the river where ducks and geese often gathered. I expected an orderly, quiet moment of reflective peace as gracious, dignified waterfowl accepted my generous offering. What I quickly came to realize was this:

The prevalence of graphic video games has caused a dramatic rise in violence in the Duck community. Or something.

It began innocently enough, although in retrospect I should have seen what was coming when the first pseudo-duck participant eyed the single loaf I carried, then fixed me with a glare that said, “If that’s all you’ve brought, you will be quite sorry, I assure you.” But of course, I mistook the natural, small upturn at the corners of his beak as a smile, and completely missed the obvious.

As I tossed little torn off bits to my “Little Buddy”, his cute little ducksy quacks signalled some sort of internal “Hey, we’ve got a live one here” radar in every waterfowl within a 12 mile radius, for within the space of looking down to grab the next slice of bread from the sack and looking back up, I had somehow been magically transported to a Hitchcockian, Tippy Hedronish moment where time itself stopped. I was completely surrounded by hundreds of ducks, geese, sparrows, robins, crows, seagulls, and any other species and/or subspecies of avian life ever catalogued by man. I swear I even saw a couple of Dodo’s mixed in there, for heaven’s sake.

A quick aside: If you happen to be a bird watcher, let me save you the trouble of spending days on end gazing through a pair of binoculars trying to catch a glimpse of that rare species of bird which would cap off your career. Simply throw a few pieces of bread to your local waterfowl, and you will get to meet that trophy bird up close and personal. I cannot, however, guarantee that you will live to tell about it.

Anyway, all manner of beady black eyes regarded my next move, and suddenly I had a much deeper appreciation for Edgar Allen Poe’s, The Raven. I slowly, VERY slowly swiveled around to judge the distance between myself and my car, and audibly gulped as I realized that my retreat had effectively been cut off not only by the ducks, geese, and other supposed bird-like creatures, but by their “offerings” which I now suspect those beasts have learned to save up for moments such as these. If you aren’t catching my drift, let me simply remind you of the saying, “As slick as goose sh*” and leave it at that.

At this point, I have to admit that any humor I may have found in the situation had long since passed, and I was getting downright panicky. It seemed as if the universe had shifted a couple of degrees off axis, and my frantic, darting glances only served to spur them on as they inched closer. I strongly considered dialing 9-1-1, but the thought of being the subject of a newspaper headline which read, “Police Save Local Idiot from Bread-Thirsty Goose Posse” would be more embarrassing than death by waterfowl, which at least had some modicum of mystery about it. Then, in a sudden, animal-trapped-in-the-corner type response, I grabbed the bread by the bottom of the sack and slung it about in a circle over my head, and everything exploded into avian nuclear bomb like slow-motion.

I honestly cannot recall how precisely I made it into my car much beyond fragmented flashes of feather clouds and beakly attempts to snatch away my car keys and/or cellphone. Once my hands had stopped shaking and my heart rate had slowed down below the “Chihuahua on Caffeine” rate, I started my car and pulled away without daring to glance back at them. I did, however, notice more than one or two pairs of fearful eyes that peered out from slitted curtains in the windows of the houses that lined the side of the boulevard opposite the river.

All I can say is, if you want to teach your children the harsh realities of Nature, taking them to feed the ducks will do so much more effectively than any documentary in which a ravenous pride of lions brings down a cute, fuzzy animal and rips it to shreds. Trust me on this.