"Look," he said, "it's a perfect day. Just the one I've been waiting for!"

     I had not considered that my brand new husband might be crazy but, as I peered out at the cold, nasty, drizzly grey day I began to consider it now. "Yah, right," I replied with little enthusiasm, "perfect if you're a duck, maybe."

     "But that's exactly the point," Ken went on, giving no thought at all to my mood, "I wanted to take you duck hunting today! I've got Dad's old double-barreled shotgun for you. As of today, it's yours. I called Clyde to see if we could hunt that cornfield of his; I saw it day before yesterday and it's flooded perfect. The ducks ought to be swarming in there on a day like today. Larry's going to go, too. It'll be fun, you'll see!"

     With that he was off to find shells, duck calls, coats, hats and boots and get us all decked out and ready to go. Larry would meet us at the field. For me he found an old army field jacket and a purple stocking hat. Boots were a problem, though. Duck hunters, of course, have waders to keep them dry or, at the very least, knee boots. Ken had the latter but I had no boots at all.

     "No problem. I'll just dig out my dad's old boots for you. They'll be a little big, but you'll be OK and they'll keep your feet nice and dry. Just wear an extra pair of socks or two." Ken's answer to most problems was an extra pair or socks . . . or two. His dad had died two years before so we had lots of his things there at the farm where his parents used to live. His mom had since moved into town and Ken and I had moved to the farm when we married. When his dad had been alive, he used to bring freshly shot ducks or pheasants to my parents occasionally. He had been generous that way, and always cleaned them first and removed the feathers. My mother was never particularly greatful, but since I did most of the cooking, I had learned to enjoy the wild birds.

     Riding over to Clyde's cornfield I had time to consider the boots. I wore a size 6 woman's shoe. These were a size 9 men's rubber knee boots. With the conversion factor, that made them approximately nine sizes too big counting half-sizes. The extra two pair of socks were lost in the caverns which were the boots. They did actually reach my knees, though, something knee boots were not truly intended to do so they should keep my feet dry at least. Assuming, of course, that I could walk in them. I felt kind of like Frankenstein's monster, picking up one humongous foot at a time and swinging it forward with a heavy, awkward "clomp." I had to have help getting my feet into the pick-up.

     So now I had a hat, a coat, boots and my own shotgun: an ancient, heavy thing which could really pack a wallop. Ken cautioned me many times about keeping the stock snugged up against my shoulder so I wouldn't break my arm if I actually fired the thing.

     The guys were in high spirits as we hiked out to the brush row that would serve as our "blind." I was a bit slower than they at arriving, having to pack my feet along with me while carrying that unfamiliar blunderbuss. They were already talking in whispers and "chuckling" into their duck calls when I arrived, a little breathless.

     "Look!" Ken's stage whisper sounded in my ear and I followed the line of his pointing finger, "Here they come!"

     I was in awe, I guess. At any rate, it never occured to me to raise the shotgun but the explosions coming from my companions guns were enough noise anyway. Two mallards landed within feet of us and the men pounced on them as soon as they hit the water. Then they did the strangest thing: holding the ducks by the heads, they kind of flipped them around like lariats.

     "What are you doing?" I had to ask.

     They both grinned. "Well," Larry explained, "it doesn't always kill them when you shoot them out of the air so we always wring their necks to make sure the job is done."

     That seemed sensible and humane to me, although just a bit grisly. I'd been hunting and fishing with Ken for four years now although we had just been married two weeks. During those years I had learned how to bait a hook with a live worm, how to kill a fish and clean it and how to gut and skin a deer. Wringing a duck's neck seemed rather mild in comparison.

     I discovered that Ken was very good with his duck call. The next flock to appear, however, still didn't prompt me to raise the shotgun. This time when the explosions went off, four birds fell from the sky at the same time: none of them close.

     "I've got the one over here," Ken called, heading in the direction of a duck on our right, "I'll get that one, too. Larry, you snag the one on the other side and you can go after that one," he said to me, pointing in the direction of a duck swimming in a small, erratic circle about a hundred yards away. "Remember to wring it's neck like this," and he demonstrated again with the dead duck already in the bushes.

     "Aren't we supposed to have a retriever for this?" I asked, peering doubtfully in the direction of the wounded duck.

     Ken laughed. "What do you think we brought you for?"

     I looked at my boots and the distance I had to cover in them. Oh, well. I shrugged my shoulders and dutifully started off after the duck who was still paddling in crazy circles. I was determined to snag that duck and wring it's neck as if I had been doing it all my life. I didn't want to embarrass either myself or Ken in front of Larry. It wouldn't do to complain or be squemish. I picked up my right boot and stepped into the field. My left boot was next. It wasn't going to be easy, I could tell, but I would do it.

     I was not a farm girl and no one had prepared me for what I was now in the middle of: a flooded, plowed corn field. The soft earth turned to thick mud as soon as I got away from the fence row and as I tried to pick up my right boot, the ooze sucked harder than I pulled. I was balanced precariously in my left boot with my bare right foot held in the air. OK, I was no dummy, I would have to try something different. I put my foot back into the boot and tried to plow forward without picking up my feet. That actually worked for a bit. The going was slow, but I was getting there.

     Then I became aware of the fact that the water was getting deeper. With each foot I plowed, the water was an inch higher on the boots and the muck was pulling even harder. I could no longer plow; I had to pull my boots up out of the mud in order to move. With the next step, I landed, in my knee-high boots, in fully thigh-high water. I had, however, reached the duck and eagerly caught it by the head. Ignoring my rapidly filling boots, I deftly flipped the bird around like Ken had shown me.

     Blink, blink, blink. The duck looked me squarely in the eye and blinked.

     Again I flipped it around the way I was supposed to. Again it blinked at me. I flipped it again. It blinked again. Panic began to set in. I had in my possession some kind of bird that, in spite of a broken neck, would not die. I wanted to be out of there: anywhere else would do just fine! I wanted to run but that was impossible considering my boots. And, in total frustration and humiliation, I began to cry.

     I refused to look at the duck clenched so tightly in my hand for the long minutes it took me to work my way back to the blind. Every step was an effort of will against the goo and each successfull one created a loud "schlork" as the field reluctantly surrendered my boot. I felt exhausted, defeated and forlorn when I finally arrived and tried, through my chattering teeth, to explain how the duck wasn't dead. My boots were sloshing water all over the place every time I moved and I had completely lost all of the socks from my right foot.

     "Did you wring its neck?" Ken asked, looking at me quizically. I think he was trying to determine if the water on my face was tears, rain or if I had actually fallen in.

     "Yes!" I blurted, "Just like you showed me!" I flipped that duck around again just to prove I had done it right. But that poor scrawny neck had had too much. The weight of the duck's body and gravity won out and the body plopped to the flood at my knees. Headless, it promptly paddled away and the head I still had clutched in my hand looked me squarely in the eye . . . and blinked.

     I have never shot a duck. I will clean them (when they have stopped blinking) and cook them and even eat them, but I will never, ever again retrieve them!