Posted on: Wednesday, July 6, 2005

OUR HONOLULU

By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

A woman tossed crumbs from an old bread bag while a mother held her baby up to watch 22 fuzzy little ducklings scamper to and fro right in the middle of Our Honolulu.

Feeding the ducks has become a morning ritual on lower Manoa Stream where it runs into the Ala Wai.

The duck population has soared to about 50. Sex is rampant. Male ducks patrol the stream for likely females. They have no couth. The inevitable result is a lot of little ducks.

"Have you seen the new baby ducks?" is a standard greeting. "They're so cute."

Twenty-two ducklings is a record even for the Peking female, known to hatch 13 at a sitting. This event occurred last week Friday.

Actually, there were two mama ducks proudly waddling among their broods. The babies ranged from yellow to black.

It was a heart-warming domestic scene. But wait. Something moved over there in the mangroves. It was long and brown and low to the ground. Beady eyes, bushy tail. A mongoose. It was watching the ducklings as it licked its chops.

What was that black apparition slinking along the bank like a ghost haunting the stream, staying out of sight, a creature of the shadows? Was it a werewolf? No, it was a feral cat checking out the menu for dinner.

The mongoose and the cat have stiff competition. The rain forest of Our Honolulu is an unforgiving place. Meals are hard to come by. What the mongoose and cat don't eat, the rats gobble up, even crumbs the ducks leave behind.

It's ironic that feeding the ducks attracts rats that eat duck eggs. If you want to be logical, somebody should put up a sign: DO NOT FEED THE DUCKS.

But I think there are too many such signs in town already. They are examples of tunnel vision. People who put up signs like that do not understand the great forces of nature.

I am confident that feeding the ducks is part of a grand design intended to give pleasure to humans and to control the duck population at the same time.

What is happening along Manoa Stream happens in all rain forests. Big animals eat little animals. Unless they do so, the population of one would overwhelm the others.

So it is on Manoa Stream. A couple of years ago, there were maybe three or four ducks on the stream. They swam down from coops in a yard above the bridge. Since people began feeding the ducks, the population has exploded.

Duck feeders are outraged when humans scoop some ducks for dinner. This is not the proper response. After all, mongoose and cats do the same thing. If they didn't, we would be up to our ying-yang in ducks.

The ritual of feeding the ducks, therefore, can be appreciated on many levels because the entire life cycle is involved.

Me, I don't feed ducks. I count them. On Sunday, there were 18.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-8073.