There are certain financial decisions that seem brilliant right up until you’re standing in your kitchen at ten o’clock at night, uncontrollably dry-heaving while your wife cleans rotten duck off things you previously considered part of your home.
This is one of those stories.
We raise ducks for food. This means that, from time to time, we need more ducks. Unfortunately, someone somewhere discovered that people will pay actual money for ducklings, and ducklings were getting expensive.
I looked at the price of buying more ducklings and decided there had to be a better way.
After all, where do ducklings come from?
Eggs.
We had eggs.
What we needed was an incubator.
This was simple economics.
Instead of repeatedly paying someone else for ducklings, I could spend approximately $200 on an incubator and manufacture my own ducks. After the initial investment, we’d basically have unlimited ducks.
I had discovered an agriculture algorithm!
While Farmers have apparently known about this for several thousand years, but it was new information to me, so don’t judge to harshly.
So we bought the incubator.
The Miracle of Life was just a 40 min drive at some persons house, easy!
I don’t remember exactly how many eggs we put in that thing. Somewhere around twenty, maybe a few more.
What I do remember is the optimism. Those weren’t eggs anymore. Those were ducks. Future ducks, sure, but ducks nonetheless. And after they were ducks they would be dinners!
Twenty-something little ducklings were going to emerge from those shells, presumably look upon me as their benevolent caretaker, and validate my $200 investment.
This was going to save us money. I had done research. I had settings. I had humidity.
I had temperature. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.
This was not the first time confidence had carried me significantly farther than actual expertise. [My adventures with Lake Logan should probably have taught me that already.]
Apparently, incubating eggs involves slightly more scientific precision than plugging a warm box into the wall and periodically looking through the little window to see if poultry has occurred.
Somewhere along the way, something went wrong. I think …the humidity was wrong.
Maybe it was too low.
Maybe it was too high.
I no longer remember, and frankly, I refuse to conduct the research necessary to find out because I’m afraid Google will show me a picture and trigger some sort of post-traumatic olfactory response.
To make a 45 day story short…Whatever I did, the eggs did not become ducks.
They became something else.
Something angry.
Something pressurized.
Something that had been quietly developing inside our home while we slept.
Time: 10:00 P.M. Location: Virginia.
It happened in the kitchen.
Because of course it did.
If you’re going to accidentally create a biological weapon, you don’t do it somewhere sensible like a shed.
You do it where you prepare food. And where 80% of your life is lived.
As I said, it was around ten o’clock at night when we heard it.
POP.
Now, in case you don’t know, eggs aren’t supposed to make that noise.
Chickens make noises.
Ducks make noises.
Eggs generally understand their place in the animal kingdom and remain silent.
This egg had rejected that arrangement.
Before we could properly investigate—
BANG.
Another one.
Then another.
Suddenly, twenty-something rotten duck eggs had apparently decided that if they weren’t getting out of the incubator as ducklings, they were getting out another way.
POP. BANG. CRACK.
It sounded like a Gatling gun going off in the kitchen.
My $200 incubator had ceased being an agricultural appliance and had become a crew-served weapon.
The eggs were exploding.
Not cracking.
Not leaking.
Exploding.
And then the smell arrived.
The Smell
I need you to understand something.
I have four children.
I have changed diapers.
I have owned dogs.
I have raised animals.
I have encountered things in bathrooms that caused me to question both the laws of biology and whether certain members of my family were technically human.
None of that prepared me for the smell I smelled that night.
The smell that came out of those eggs was the single worst thing I have ever smelled in my life.
Not one of the worst. Not some akin to a bad smell, not even something you shiver at night years later remembering.
The worst.
You see. There are smells that are unpleasant.
There are smells that make you wrinkle your nose.
There are smells that make you leave a room.
And then there are smells that enter your body, seize control of your central nervous system, and inform your stomach that the evacuation procedure has begun.
I started dry-heaving.
Not dramatically.
Not for attention.
My body had simply taken over. I was on auto pilot.
Every time I got anywhere near the kitchen—
HUUURRRGGHH.
I would retreat.
I’d try again.
HUUURRRGGHH.
Back out.
I was the man of the house.
A United States Navy sailor.
Father of four.
Provider.
Protector.
Duck farmer.
Completely defeated by wafting air.
The smell was so bad that the children couldn’t handle it. The next day!
Jo couldn’t stand it.
Even the dog ran away from it.
I want that entered into evidence…
Dogs eat things they find in the yard that we don’t discuss as a family.
Dogs sniff things that would get a human being permanently removed from polite society.
A dog will encounter a dead animal that’s been baking in the sun for three days and think:
I should roll on that.
Rogue smelled the kitchen and essentially said:
Absolutely not.
When the dog draws the line, you’ve crossed into territory mankind was never meant to explore.
In Sickness and in Rotten Duck Eggs, I think it was in my wedding vows, there are moments in marriage when you discover what your vows really mean.
For richer or poorer.
In sickness and in health.
For better or worse.
And apparently:
When your husband incorrectly incubates twenty-something duck eggs until they explode in the kitchen.
Jo cleaned it up.
She had to.
I physically could not do it.
I would approach the kitchen like a man preparing to storm a fortified position.
I’d make it three steps.
Dry-heave.
Retreat.
Regroup.
Try again.
Dry-heave.
Retreat.
At some point, Jo realized that waiting for her husband to regain control of his digestive system was not a viable cleanup strategy.
So my wife—the woman who had absolutely nothing to do with creating this situation—had to clean up the rotten duck-egg apocalypse while I provided critical logistical support… from a very, very safe distance.
And by “critical logistical support,” I mean I tried really hard not to throw up.
Marriage is a partnership.
Sometimes one person carries 50 percent and the other carries 50 percent.
Sometimes your wife cleans exploded rotten eggs out of the kitchen while you stand in another room making wounded walrus noises.
It all balances out eventually.
Probably.
There Was No Saving the Incubator. Once the immediate disaster had been contained, we had another problem. The incubator. My $200 investment.
The centerpiece of my brilliant duck-based economic strategy.
Technically, it still existed.
Emotionally, it was dead to me. We could have tried to clean it. I’m sure somewhere on the internet there is a helpful article titled How to Remove the Smell of Decomposing Waterfowl From an Incubator.
I did not read that article.
There are times when a man must look at an investment, consider the money he has spent, weigh the possibility of recovery, and make a rational financial decision.
This was not one of those times.
That incubator had seen things.
It knew things.
It had become unclean.
There was no amount of bleach, vinegar, baking soda, prayer, fire, or direct intervention from the federal government that was going to make me put another egg inside that machine.
We threw it away.
Two hundred dollars.
Gone.
Twenty-something eggs.
Gone.
Future ducklings.
Gone.
My dignity.
Gone sometime around the 100th dry-heave.
But the smell?
Oh the smell, The smell stayed.
Three Days. For three days, our house smelled like the gates of Hell had briefly opened in our kitchen and then been shut again without proper ventilation.
You could leave the house.
You could breathe fresh air.
You could begin healing.
Then you’d come home, open the door, and—
There it was.
Waiting.
The Ghost of Ducks That Never Were.
It didn’t matter how much we cleaned.
It didn’t matter what we opened.
It didn’t matter what we sprayed.
The smell had moved in.
It started to receive mail.
It was considering registering to vote.
For three days, I would catch just enough of it to start dry-heaving again.
My body remembered before my brain did.
A tiny molecule of rotten duck would float past my nose and somewhere deep inside me an alarm would sound:
WE’RE UNDER ATTACK.
And there I’d go again.
HUUURRRGGHH.
But Think of the Money We Saved!!
Eventually, the smell went away. The kitchen recovered. The children recovered.
The dog eventually returned from wherever she had sought asylum.
Jo presumably reconsidered several of the decisions that had led her to this point in life.
And I was left to assess the results of my financial plan. The original problem was simple: Ducklings were too expensive. So, in order to avoid spending money on ducklings, we: Bought a roughly $200 incubator.
Used more than twenty eggs.
Produced zero ducklings.
Destroyed the eggs.
Threw away the incubator.
Temporarily lost the use of our kitchen.
Traumatized the dog.
Nearly caused me to vomit repeatedly…
And sentenced my wife to cleaning up something that I’m pretty sure requires a hazmat endorsement in several states.
There are many lessons a person could take from this experience.
Read the instructions. Learn how humidity works. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Or incubator.
Whatever.
But I think the most important lesson is the simplest.
Sometimes the expensive option is actually the cheap option.
So the next time I looked at the price of ducklings, I didn’t complain.
I didn’t calculate.
I didn’t research incubators.
I didn’t announce another innovative cost-saving strategy to my family.
I looked at those beautiful, overpriced little fluffy ducks and thought:
You know what?
That’s a bargain.
Or better yet… just lets the ducks lay a nest and do the work for you!!
Apparently, incubating eggs involves slightly more scientific precision than plugging a warm box into the wall and periodically looking through the little window to see if poultry has occurred. For anyone interested in incubating duck eggs correctly—and apparently there is a correct way—the University of Minnesota has an actual guide.
Hope today smells better than mine did,
austininva
If exploding duck eggs haven’t convinced you that we’re qualified adults, [The Spanker-in-Chief probably won’t help our case.]
