Prince and the Five Centavo Duck

My first pet was a dog. Well, it wasn't really mine. It was my aunt's (-- the youngest of my maternal aunts who, at that time, still lived with my grandmother); given to her as a gift by a suitor (they eventually married).

The dog-- still a puppy then, was called Prince. I'm not sure who gave it its name. Everybody just called him Prince. As Prince grew he warmed up to me. Well, at least, whenever I was at my grandmother's house. Prince was always glad to see me. I guess that would mean that, technically, Prince was my dog.

Prince was a tricolor of gray and tawny brown on white, with pricked ears and a tightly curled bushy tail. A cowlick on his wrinkled forehead and almond eyes gave him a perpetual stern Clint Eastwood squint. As long as he was tall, Prince had a square stance; he had a distinctive horse-like gait that was graceful and elegant. Prince skimmed the ground in a double-suspension gallop when running flat out at top speed. Prince did not bark like a regular dog; but I was sure he was not a mute (if indeed such a condition existed in dogs) for he could mimic the beginnings of a rooster’s crow and even manage a long drawn-out eerie howl (or is it a yodel?); he could growl, too; but mostly his vocalizations were a curious mix of yelps and grunts; seemingly desperate attempts at human speech which marked his failings as a dog. He had the aloof disposition of a cat; cleaned himself like a cat and like a cat was not dependent on the opinion of the people that fed him.

Prince was, I should say, his own dog and merely tolerated the displeasure of being kept as a pet. Still, Prince humored me by running to my side— and no other, when I whistle for him; pretending he was my pet.

For the record, my first true pet was a duck. During one of my vacations in Frisco, Dada, my beloved grandmother brought home a bibi-- a duckling, in a small brown bag, bought for five centavos at the market. It was given to me. Thus, it was mine. And that made it, I guess, my pet. But, nobody looked at it as a pet. It was more of a novelty, a cheap toy that is not expected to last for more than a week much less to grow into a duck. But, it did. Well, it almost didn’t. It had a few close calls: stepped on a number of times and a fall from the dining table gave it a broken wing, a twisted leg and a slashed webbing on its left foot. Life marks all who pass through it, even if you’re a duck. And maybe because its bones did not heal right, it walked in a double waddle with its head zigzagging sideways.

It wasn't long before it had gotten too big to be inside the house. It was making a mess and I had to bring it out. I let it loose where the kitchen sink drains out. Immediately, it dipped its beak into the water and did what appeared as a gargle. It was a happy duck. From a distance, Prince stood and stared.

I whistled. I saw Prince's ears pricked up but he wasn't looking at me. He had his eyes on the duck. I glanced down at the duck and it too was looking straight at Prince. For a moment they held each other's stare. Then the duck flapped its wings and made a show of its double waddle walk. Exaggerating each movement. Prince looked for a moment then turned and ran away. It was the first time Prince ignored my whistle.
Soon the duck was lording it over a patch of the yard it had marked as its territory. It would chase away intruders who had crossed the invisible border of its domain— an area around the main staircase of the house; and if by chance it were given the slip, it would pinch one of the intruder’s slipper or shoe, using its beak, and secrete it away. Prince tolerated these and kept distance from the duck's domain.
The mongrel without a bark and the odd duck without a name, two that were not whole, were free spirits that ambled along a path marked out by fate and at the crossroads where halves become one, they ultimately converged; it was inevitable. The duck disappeared after that, vanished.

Prince soon argued with a cousin. And for that indiscretion was hunted, cornered then whacked on the head with a steel pipe by dog-eating hooligans on orders of an uncle.

I never had a pet dog again after that. Or, a duck for that matter.