The Duck Who Claimed the Ditch
A white Pekin duck named Alderman took over our irrigation headgate in the Arkansas Valley and began collecting tolls in bread and tortillas.
Water is serious business in the Arkansas Valley. Every shareholder has a turn, every turn has a time, and the ditch rider walks the bank with a clipboard and a face you do not argue with. When my turn comes up at four in the morning on a Thursday, I show up with a shovel and a thermos, and I do not hit snooze.
The first sign of trouble was a feather on the headgate. A white one, bright as a handkerchief. Then I noticed a pair of orange feet on the concrete lip and, above them, a very round, very settled duck. He stood on the control wheel and looked at me as though I had arrived late to his own property.
I named him Alderman, because he had the look of someone who sits on committees. He was a Pekin duck, probably abandoned from somebody's pond party, and he had decided that the headgate was a post to be held. When I came to open the gate, he would waddle onto the wheel and sit down. When I shooed him, he would honk, move two feet and sit again. I could not turn the wheel without lifting him.
By the end of the week, I realized the other shareholders had noticed. Bart, who farms the next quarter section, left a slice of bread on the bank, and Alderman stepped aside for it. Pretty soon every neighbor on the ditch was bringing a toll. A little girl from the Garcia place gave him half a tortilla. The ditch rider, a stern man named Mr. Tafoya, paused on his rounds, folded his clipboard under his arm and, without a word, handed over a cracker.
I got my water, the correct number of hours, and the duck got his lunch. The folks at the Colorado Water Conservation Board do great work on water planning, but nothing in their guides covers what to do about a waterfowl with a grievance. We call him the Ditch Commissioner now. He seems to like the title, and the whole tale lives on farm.FM with a picture of him on the wheel.