Gay love is hard, especially for a duck.

Hi. My name is Howard and I’m a male Cayuga duck. Which means I’m a medium size and black all over. I know what you’re thinking, ‘what could be so exciting about a ducks life?’ but you’re just humans, you know nothing of what lies behind the endless quacking and ducking for stale bread in the pond at the local pond. That’s why I wrote this. To show you we’re not all just boring things with feathers that swim and quack. So here we go, we’ll start at the beginning, shall we?

I pulled my head up from where it was tucked neatly inside my breast feathers and waddled out from underneath the blackberry bush which I had slept underneath last night. It was a particularly chilly morning and I was shivering with the cold so I decided to get some exercise and warm up before breakfast. I got out onto the pond and started paddling my feet around in the water, making me glide effortlessly across the surface. Despite the cold weather the sun was pretty bright and it shone down directly on the pond, and onto me, giving my feathers a slight metallic green tinge. When I was feeling like my temperature was back to normal I swam to the edge and stepped onto the rocky surface of the soil. My mother called me to tell me that she had something ready for me to eat. Although to you it would just sound like a quack and you couldn’t actually determine what she was saying. Humans are so dumb. I went over to my mother and looked at what she had to feed me. She had left me quite a good sized slug so I gobbled it up and sat down, waiting for it to go down a bit so I wouldn’t throw it back up. I pecked her head feathers and crossed the pond, making my way to school.

When I arrived I took my place in the circle next to the love of my life, Barney. I groaned when I looked at the dusty floor to see what had been scraped in with the soil, what we would be learning about today, Cayuga history. We did this every week and seeing as it was my classes third week we all had it drilled into our brains. Barney ruffled my feathers,

“It’ll be okay Howard, you have me here to entertain you.” I smiled. Barney was always there for me. I leant in a whispered to him.

“Thank you. I love you.”

“Same here.” I, in return, ruffled his feathers with my beak and Professor Atty walked in.

“Settle down kids. Today we will be learning about the history of the Cayuga duck.” He droned. “Once upon a time, in 1809, a human male found a pair of wild, black ducks, He, quite cruelly may I add, removed joints from their wings to stop them flying away. They settled on the edge of his pond and soon had babies, who were either slaughtered and eaten by other humans or forced to have babies of their own. This was known as breeding. Eventually the breeding tactic paid off and the ducks were named Cayuga ducks after a lake which was named after old humans. Or as they call them, natives. You have to be able to repeat all that back if you hope to pass your exams. That’s all we have time for today, off you go.”

No one could wait to be out of there and, as always, there was a huge squash to get to the pond and go our separate ways. Me and Barney waited until the queue had gone down to avoid getting squashed. That rush was hardcore, ducks died in that rush.

“Wanna come back to mine today?” Barney asked me.

“OK. I’ll have to tell my mother she won’t need to catch me some dinner though, come with me?”

“Sure I will. I was thinking you could stay over too. My bush will be much warmer with someone to share it with.” I giggled. Did he mean what I thought he meant?

“Sounds like fun. But do you mean just innocent sleeping or.. something else?”

“Whatever you want me to mean.” He pecked my ass, “Come on, ducks will think we actually want to stay in school.” I looked around to notice that, not only was the rush over, but the school was deserted. I laughed and waddled over to the pond, heading towards my home, with Barney hot on my heels. I told my mum the news and then we swam to Barneys home, only to have his mother greet us.

“Hiya love.” She pecked Barneys cheek. “Oh hello Howard, you staying the night?” She looked from Barney to me suspiciously. Did she know what was going on here?

“Um, yeah. If that’s okay.” I mumbled. I didn’t know if she approved so I had to be sneaky.

“Of course, its fine. Can I get you some dinner?”

“Actually ma, I’m not hungry. So just for Howy.” Barney butted in.

“That’s okay. I’m not hungry too, so don’t get me anything either.” She eyed us suspiciously again.

“Well if you’re sure.” We both nodded in response and waddled off to Barneys bush, which was really pretty. It looked to be a strawberry bush only it wasn’t season yet so they were all pretty and flowery. He climbed underneath and beckoned me to follow. I climbed in after him and smiled. But then I realised what we were about to do, something I hadn’t done before. I wasn’t sure if he had but I was nervous.

“Barney, have you done this before?”

“No but I’ve heard about it and it sounds good. Besides it’s the best way we can prove we love each other. Unless you don’t love me anymore.” I snuggled into him.

“Of course I still love you. I’m just a little nervous is all.” He smiled and licked my beak, I opened it and met his tongue with mine. He licked all down my front, wetting my feathers and carried on lower. As his tongue reached a spot that gave me a lot of pleasure I let go of all my insecurities and let him do what he had to do.

The morning sunlight woke me up and I looked around to find unfamiliar surrounding. The it all came flooding back to me and I relived the joy as Barney told me he loved me. I saw him still asleep and decided to leave him resting. I went out to forage for myself, for the first time ever when I heard Barney telling me to wait for him. I did and we both waddled out into the big wide world together.

As I was munching on a cricket I looked around to see that I had lost Barney. Panicking I frantically ran around looking for him. I heard a faint screaming and ran towards it, only to see a big, fat, badger torturing my lover. I screamed as loud as my quack would let me but it was too late. Barney had fallen silent and I was left with the pieces of my dead boyfriend.