An Impossible Job

This morning, on my way to work, I cycled past a seagull. It was pecking at a dead duckling on the pavement. The poor thing lay on its back, eyes to the heavens, lifeless, as the seagull drove its giant beak into the duckling’s slender neck.

Fifty metres further down the road, on the opposite side, I heard a piercing wail. A mother duck—at least I assume she was the mother—was defending her remaining ducklings from another seagull a few metres away. Her cry was desperate. The ducklings huddled tight against her. They must have just watched one of their siblings snatched away. Now she had to fight to keep the rest—or as many as she could—alive.

On my side of the road, two larger ducks stood watching. I figured they were the males, already across and now frozen, helpless, as the attack unfolded behind them. Maybe one was the father. The road separated them. The mother was the one defending.

A few metres further along, on a bench, a giant crow sat watching. Waiting.

Of course, I was projecting my own fears onto this scene. Maybe it was a father protecting the ducklings. Maybe all the adults were female. But it was still tragic: the mother—if she was the mother—wailing and standing between her chicks and the approaching gull. The ducklings pressed close, held by some base instinct to stay with her. And the two adult ducks on my side looked on, perhaps with weary animal wisdom, knowing any intervention was futile.

As I cycled through this horrific tableau, I felt the impossible weight of parenting. How you fight and fight to keep your brood safe. How you can never relax, never take your eye off the ball, for fear of ending up like these ducks. The two adults beside me seemed to know that truth: sometimes you have to accept the inevitable. After all, what could ducks do against larger gulls—and a crow waiting like a deathly sentinel?

I cycled on. I thought about stopping, but realised how futile it would be. The ducks and their chicks would be more frightened of me, even if I meant to help, than of the predators circling them. I knew I could do nothing. I knew this was the harsh logic of the natural world. And I knew that a mother can never protect all her young.

I knew that truth more than most.

I should have stopped to help.

I should have.