Creek Running North

After the interest in the Puke Duck story from Zeke’s vocabulary list — well, OK, it was just Ilyka who said anything — I thought I would explain a little. Graphic details below the fold.

My mom’s partner Jim is a great guy. He’s one of those quiet and capable types, significantly smarter than he lets on, and as an old farmboy he’s got a gigantic soft spot for animals. He’s been one of Zeke best friends for Zeke’s whole life. All that said, Becky and I raised quiet eyebrows at each other when Jim gave Zeke the duck pictured above, which he’d found at a flea market somewhere for a dollar or so. It was godawful ugly, for one thing: a rubber duck in a sailor hat and neckerchief with big blue eyes? Shudder. But it wasn’t a gift for me and Becky, so our aesthetic concerns weren’t important. We were mainly worried that Zeke would spurn it, hurting Jim’s feelings. Zeke had always been a stuffed animal type dog. Zeke didn’t do rawhide. Rubber bones and Kongs and cow hooves and any toy whose main purpose was to be gnawed upon? Zeke didn’t like those either, unless they came with marrow on the inside.

And in fact, Zeke wasn’t too interested in the duck at first. He did take it from Jim, feigning interest. He was always polite that way. If I recall correctly, he carried it into the next room and put it on the floor, where it stayed for some weeks.

For years and years, Zeke had a very sensitive stomach. We think that’s what it was, anyway. He may just have been high-strung. He could eat just about anything — hot sauce, whole chickens with bones, wooden spoons that tasted a little too much like stew — but whatever it was, he often ate it twice. After quizzing a couple of vets and trying different food to no avail, we eventually got used to it. We horrified a new vet a few years ago when I casually mentioned the vomiting and the vet said “he vomits every single day? How long has this been going on?” and I said “about eleven years.” It had become unremarkable, with no effect on his blood chemistry nor any apparent damage to his GI tract. Dogs are designed for much more casual vomiting than are we primates, after all. It’s how wolves feed their puppies. We hardly even noticed after a while. He’d eat, we’d leave the back door open, he’d go outside and make horrible horking noises for a while which would then be followed by the sound of lips smacking. It was only a problem when we weren’t home and he was locked inside, and even then he was fairly efficient at cleaning up the carpet. We needed but vacuum once the spot dried.

I don’t know how long it was after Jim’s gift arrived, but at one point we noticed a new auditory component to the regurgitation ritual: the sound of a rubber duck being squeaked to within an inch of its life. And there was something else, another sound… Zeke was crying. Or yelping, or something in between. It was not a sad sound, really, but an excitement somehow both deliberate and desperate. He would eat his fill of kibble, and then he would find the duck and start playing with it until he’d excited himself to the point where he could vomit. He never showed any interest in the duck at any other time, even if I teased him with it when we were playing. And he never used any other toy the same way. He’d fling the duck, catch it in mid-air or run to where it landed to fling it again, run in tight circles crying the whole time, and then the denouement and second helpings.

Before long he had the routine mastered to the point where the whole process took only 45 seconds or less. I don’t remember how we broke the news to Jim, exactly, about how his gift had been incorporated into Zeke’s daily life, but I do know Jim was oddly pleased. I was forever pulling Puke Duck — for what else could we call it? — out of garden beds, behind lawnmowers, even out of an eavestrough after Zeke had been especially enthusiastic one day. It was very important that Zeke have ready access to the Puke Duck. Things could get ugly if the Puke Duck was unavailable. Zeke and the Puke Duck were a team. Each one had a job to do, and each one did that job flawlessly, each day, for a decade.

Then one day it happened: Zeke vomited no more, and Puke that mighty rubber duck he ceased his fearless squeak.

That vet whose equanimity we had shaken with tales of Zeke’s digestive history suggested a new food designed for sensitive stomachs, and that was that. For the last four years or so Zeke has eaten his dinners once and once only, and Puke Duck has lain unchewed upon in various corners of our yard. A tidier man would have put him away somewhere, perhaps even thrown him out. I can’t help but think that Zeke might derive some comfort from its presence, though: it has been his steadfast and utterly disgusting friend.