When Ducks Take Up Residence In Your Pool

[“Let Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published April 29, 2024] ©2024

Every spring I conduct what I call a Preemptive Rodential Offensive, denuding my orange tree of 700+ oranges to avert our annual summer rat invasion. A rat accompli, the only fauna I then have to deal with are our aviary birds and our dog, Lily. 

That was until my husband remarked, “Do you hear quacking?”  We’ve lived in our house for decades and had never had a single duck in our pool, but suddenly a mallard pair, whom we dubbed Quick and Quack (a nod to NPR), decided to make our pool their personal lake.

At first we were totally charmed by them.  Ducks!  How fun!  But by day three we couldn’t help but notice that our pool area and pool were sporting alarming amounts of duck excrement giving new meaning to the term “poop deck.”  With regret, I called a local wildlife agency for advice about their relocation.

I quickly discovered that wildlife agencies see ducks differently than pool-owners.  My wildlife person surmised that they had created a nest somewhere in our back yard.  What luck! she said.  Baby ducks are so cute! 

I nervously inquired about the gestation for duck eggs. Twenty-nine days, she said.  I thought I could probably live with 29 days of ducks until she added, “and then another ten weeks until they can fly.”  Definitely, she says, have to keep the dog out of the back yard once the baby ducks are born.  And btw, we’ll need to put a wood plank at the shallow end of the pool so the baby ducks can get out. 

I said, what if the grandchildren want to come and swim?  And she said, “Oh, they’ll just LOVE the baby ducks!”  One got the impression she was seriously focused on the innate adorableness of infant avians and not on (1) we have a duckling-eating dog who is not amused by intruders in her personal space (2) we have a lawn maintenance service with loud mowers incompatible with baby ducks and (3) we (sort of) have a life. 

At first the wildlife lady had an ally in Olof who was totally into the whole miracle of birth thing.  That was until he heard that a typical clutch is 12-13 ducklings.  Even he had to admit that 15 ducks pooping in our pool for ten weeks was going to be a biohazard from which we were not likely to recover.  It was also mentioned that once you make them feel at home they come back every year in perpetuity.

When the pool guy showed up a week later he nearly collapsed on the pool deck weeping when he saw the pool.  Ducks, he maintained, are harder to get rid of than herpes.

“Can you actually get rid of herpes?” I said.

“No!” he practically sobbed.  “And you can’t get rid of ducks either!”

He’d had two other clients with “duck issues” in which they’d tried everything under the sun (other than a .22).  Makes the pool very hard to clean not to mention extremely unappetizing to swim in.  He said we’d look back on the rats as good news. 

It appeared after two weeks that the ducks didn’t actually have a nest here; they just liked the locale.  I quickly learned that we are hardly the first people in La Jolla to have this problem.  No less than the pricey piscine of the venerable Beach and Tennis Club has been mallardially-afflicted in the past. 

The internet was full of duck eradication ideas, like buying a six-foot-long plastic alligator pool toy to float on the pool.  But this suggestion was followed by 24 posts of “Doesn’t work” and even one photo of ducks floating on the alligator.

Many of the suggestions required crisscrossing the pool with fishing line or rope so that the ducks couldn’t access the pool.  But you can’t either.  Dozens of other non-lethal suggestions involved bright shiny objects, fake snakes, a product called King’s Duck Solution (“ a secret blend of herbs and spices that will naturally remove ducks” but probably contains strychnine), and even hiring a falconer.  I had a feeling the falconer was out of our price range.

Ultimately I went low tech:  the hose.  At first I just sprayed a shower in their direction but they just swam over and preened themselves in it, as if to say, “OK, a little to the left.”  So I turned it to jet mode and directed it as close to them as possible without actually hitting them. (We were treating them no differently than we do house guests who overstay their welcome.)  They took off immediately but I heard telltale quacking ten minutes later.  They seem to be reappearing less and less, however; days go by that we don’t see them.  In some ways we’ll miss them.  But we have a whole lot of duck poop on the deck to remember them by.

Making themselves right at home

Why No One Wants Sterling Silverware Anymore

[“Let Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published April 22, 2024] ©2024

I simply refuse to be defeated by sterling silverware.  But so far the tally is flatware 3, Inga 0.

We have inherited a set of beautiful sterling flatware from a great aunt of Olof’s and since we had begun using my mother’s bone china on a daily basis, we decided to jettison the stainless and upgrade ourselves to daily sterling as well.  As the L’Oreal commercial says, we're worth it.

Like many women, I had been saving my mother’s bone china for use on special occasions, and with the hope of passing it on to my daughters-in-law.  News flash: the daughters-in-law don’t want it.  In fact, they don’t want their own family’s bone china and sterling silver.  It’s a new era.  This stuff is harder to get rid of than zucchini in August.

So we figured, what the heck.  We’d just start using our good china every day.  I researched the best dishwasher detergents for bone china, the answer to which is “none.”  You should really hand wash it.  But so not happening in my house, where the motto, inside and out, is “survival of the fittest.”

The sterling thing has turned out to be a whole different ballgame.  My much-missed long-deceased mother had beautiful sterling flatware, an exquisite set of Limoges (in addition to the wedding china that I now have), and lovely Baccarat crystal, all of which is in the possession of our younger-than-any-of-us stepmother, Fang, along with our now-deceased father’s estate.  (Why do men always think with the little head?) At least weekly, I pray that the Limoges is leaching lead.

But maybe Fang did me a favor stealing the sterling.  Once Olof’s great-aunt’s flatware came into our lives, I quickly discovered how truly high maintenance it is.  If you look on the internet regarding care of sterling flatware, you will conclude, as I did, that 99% of it lives a perpetually shunned life in its wooden storage coffin, ultimately to be inflicted on another hapless and now-rejecting generation.  Sterling flatware is the ultimate white elephant.  Actually, the elephant would be less work.

Now there are a few champions out there who do encourage you to use sterling every day. Life is short, they exhort!  Use the good stuff!  It’s not that hard if you follow a few (dozen) simple rules! 

The biggest downside I’ve found with sterling flatware is that you can’t use it on actual food.  Among the comestibles that damage sterling silver are vinegar, acidic fruit juices, eggs, mayo, salad dressings, spaghetti sauces, table salt, olives, and pickles.  We have enough trouble with our primary care doctor axing the high glycemic carbs without having to eliminate whole other classifications of food based on the preferences of our flatware.

There is a huge debate as to whether you can put sterling flatware in your dishwasher; most sites recommend you hand wash and dry it.  If I have to hand wash all my silverware, the score would be flatware 50, Inga -10.  My feeling is that everybody has to give a little here, including (and especially) the flatware. 

Even the dishwasher advocates concede, however, that you can’t let the sterling stuff touch stainless stuff in the silverware basket.  Something about electrolytic reactions, ions, pitting and other bad scientific-y things.   So against my better judgment, my silverware caddy now has its own DMZ with a strict non-fraternization policy on either side.  How long this will actually last has already been a subject of wagers in our household.

But even that’s not enough.  Absolutely no lemon-scented or “citrus additives” in your dishwasher soap.  It is also important to rinse sterling silverware immediately after exposure to food, preferably while still in the diner’s hands.  Letting it sit on dinner plates on the kitchen counter while you watch 90 Day Fiancé is inviting disaster.  It just goes against everything I believe in (never mind a lifetime of marginal housekeeping skills) to have my life controlled by silverware.  But as much as I try to ignore it, I hear it calling out to me: “Yoo hoo, Inga, we’re tarnishing out here!” 

Waayyy too many sites advise that should you fail to comply with the Sterling Silver Playbook that you will have to “take the ware for repairs to a professional silversmith.”  There is nothing about the term “professional silversmith” that sounds life-enhancing to me.

The bottom line, of course, is what sterling flatware really requires is…servants.  The Downton Abbey cast seemed to have no dearth of lackeys polishing the stuff on a regular basis.  But I am determined to use my nice things, including my new sterling, and nobody is going to stop me! Even if it all looks like hell in six months. 

As for glassware, I’m afraid it’s strictly Crate & Barrel.  Because I don’t think Fang is leaving me the Baccarat in her will.  It probably couldn’t go in the dishwasher anyway.

 

Inga's Guide to Post-Divorce Dates From Hell

[“Let Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published April 15, 2024] ©2024

OK, so I’m guessing my local readership is a little tired of broken appliances and streetlights at this point.  I get it.  So maybe it’s time for a little lighter fare, like Inga’s Primer of Post-Divorce Dates from Hell.  I confess I was inspired by inadvertently cruising into a web site where people (read women) can vent – and more importantly, advise - about disastrous dates.  Where were these ladies years ago when I was newly single and needed them? 

I was engaged to my first husband at 20 and clueless about dating when I was divorced at 35. Let me just say that the learning curve was huge.  It’s a bit of a toss-up as to which of my early dates was the biggest creep: the criminal lawyer with a cocaine habit and herpes? The newly-certified massage therapist whose date proposal was giving me a massage at half price.

Then there was the commodities broker who invited me out for drinks. I'm guessing he should have gone short on pork bellies instead of long.  The passenger side door of his ancient two-door sports car was broken which meant climbing over the gear shift - in a short skirt - from the driver's side to get to my seat. Could he have warned me in advance? Or was this all part of the plan?  

But here's some dating advice from me: never let your date pick out the rental movie.  Of course, this advice is fairly useless since rental movies have pretty much gone the way of the rotary dial telephone except at the public library where you can get them for free.  But rental movies in the pre-streaming world used to be a big thing. It would be a mob scene at movie rental places on weekend nights as people vied for the latest flicks. It behooved you to develop a friendly relationship with one of the desk people who might be persuaded to hold a copy of the latest Star Wars for your when someone returned it. 

Anyway...shortly before my marriage ended, my then-husband and I had bought a 100-movie package at Video Library, the earlier incarnation of Blockbuster Video on Fay Avenue.  (The Flower Pot Cafe now occupies this space.)  Even after we separated, my ex and I retained joint custody of the  package.  The Video Library clerk knew both my former husband and me well; we frequently both had movies out on the same night. 

One Tuesday, when the kids were going to be at their dad’s, I suggested to a date that we cook at my house (I couldn’t afford to take him out to a restaurant but wanted to reciprocate his hospitality) and rent a video. Since the video store was on his way to my home, I suggested that he might stop by and pick out a movie on our plan. In retrospect, I can’t even imagine what I was thinking. Video Library at that time had a back room with pornographic titles. My kids (aged three and six) loved to crawl under the curtain and giggle at all the “boobies” on the boxes.

Still, I’m thinking my date is going to pick out a nice rom-com, so it was with no little dismay on my part when he shows up with “All American Girls in Heat, Part 2.” I just Googled it and yes, this flick is still out there (although I’m guessing not at the public library), summarized as "A rich woman gathers her old college girlfriends for a free weekend on a tropical island so they can relate their wildest sexual experiences." 

I can’t imagine what Part I was like, but frankly porno flicks have never done much for me. On the big screen particularly, a tumescing organ just ends up looking like a bald cyclopic version of the Monster That Devoured Cleveland. Suffice it to say that my date loved the movie. He never even noticed I’d gone off to do the dishes.

Returning the movie the next morning was problematical.  There was no anonymous drop box then like Blockbuster instituted later; you had to actually bring it to the desk and have them check it in. As I stood there clutching the paper lunch bag disguising my video (in case I ran into someone I knew), the video guy pulled up our family membership on his screen. “Looks like you guys have two movies out,” he notes. Then he bursts out laughing. “I’m not even going to tell you what your ex-husband rented. It’s probably the grossest movie we have. Let’s see, you’re returning The Care Bears in the Land Without Feelings?”

I was actually recounting this story to my adult sons recently.  I think this may have been a mistake.  I predict this story will be told at my funeral.  And I also predict that I’m going to get Part 1 for Christmas.