TALONS AND TALES: A TRIBUTE TO SHORDEE

THE GRAND TRUNK TROUBADOURS (YOU CAN SPOT THE EAGLE!)

It’s been just days since I helped carry SHORDEE (Christina Shordee) to her gravesite.  Shordee was a vocalist and ukulele player in our band, THE GRAND TRUNK TROUBADOURS.  Not only was Shordee a passionate and irreplaceable band member, she was also a great social worker.  

During the day she was a School Counselor with Regina Public Schools (having the same daytime employer as myself, and pretty much the same duties … except she had elementary students for clients, whereas mine are from high school).

As a School Counselor she was famous for her Are You an EAGLE or a DUCK? workshops, workshops of which I thought the idea was corny, and which I had mentioned to her several times over the years.  Reflecting, methinks the workshops were valuable (for the students) but it was the metaphor that was corny (for me).

I believe corny because Shordee’s message followed the AQUILA versus LAME DUCK motif.  

Factoid: 

EAGLE is from the Latin, AQUILA, which means water-colored; DUCK is from ANATIDAE, which means swimming bird, and/or DUCAS, from Middle English for commander. 

Hmmm … methinks water is more associated with DUCKS than with EAGLES, and EAGLES more associated with commander than DUCKS but …

This EAGLE-DUCK metaphor portrays the EAGLE as a high flying superhero; whereas, the DUCK is portrayed as … a DUCK.

Take, for example, THE EAGLE by Alfred, Lord Tennyson:

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls

He watches from the mountain walls

And like a thunderbolt he falls.

And take, for example, THE DUCK by Ogden Nash:

Behold the duck

When it dines or sups

It bottoms up.

Oh yes … we should continue to mollycoddle the eagle while marginalizing the duck.

In that tradition, allow me to fustigate these two sets of feathers, whilst of course, besmirching the duck.

Anyone having very keen eyesight has an EAGLE-eye; when the EAGLE has landed it is payday; a legal EAGLE is lawyer.  It has been suggested, in Shordee’s workshops for example, that each of us has an EAGLE within that wants to soar, yet most of us seemed destined stay quacking on the paddy.

The connotations of the canards glower compared to that of the EAGLE.  You are a dead DUCK seems more than an idle threat; everyone knows the fable of the ugly duckling; no one wants to be a lame DUCK or sitting DUCK.  There are a few more generous idioms, DUCK soup and water off a DUCK’S back meaning it’s easy; get your DUCKS in a row for getting organized.  And the ever philosophical, If it looks like a DUCK, waddles like a DUCK, and quacks like a DUCK … IT’S A DUCK.

I’ll continue the lofty-low comparison.

Those raptors (EAGLES) have keen eyesight; they have such good vision that they can spot another EAGLE soaring 50 miles away.  EAGLES have hooked beaks, sharp talons, and carnivorous diets. They always give fight, they are fearless, and they never eat dead meat.  The EAGLE is not a scavenger.  EAGLES are symbols of strength and freedom, independence, even self-actualization

The EAGLES amongst us rise above our self-imposed limitations.  EAGLES are high flyers, up to 10,000 feet, and tenacious enough to take advantage of every storm current to soar even higher.

Let us advert now to the DUCK, the underrated DUCK.

(A few quirks and quacks):

DUCKS keep to the ditches.  There are more than 100 species of DUCKS (mallards, wigeons, and teals)found throughout the world in marshes, swamps, rivers, creeks, oceans.  DUCKS are able to hybridize with other species  If you are a DUCK you have strong webbed feet.  If you are a DUCK you are either a dabbler or a diver for feeding.  If you are a DUCK you can take off in vertical flight from land or water.  DUCKS are one of only two animals on the planet to imprint.  The DUCKLING, upon hatching, will attach itself to whatever living creature it first sees, knowing that this is its species.  (The animal to do this is not an EAGLE, it is a goose.)  DUCKS have water proof feathers to weather practically any storm.  The DUCK is a self-contained flotilla, having hollow bones and feathers filled with air pockets.

EAGLES supposedly soar whereas, DUCKS quack and complain. In reality:  DUCKS are dedicated to digging the ditches and swamping the ponds and going to work every day.  And when DUCKS fly, they do as a team in a V formation.  DUCKS are downy and cuddly … EAGLES are never cuddly.

Canard quacks are canorous.  What sounds do EAGLES make besides squeaky whistles?

The comparison is campy.

EAGLES are atop totem poles; DUCKS are in bath tubs.

Whoa … and to compare a DUCK’S bill to an EAGLE’S aquiline beak.  Really. That is just DUCKY.

Factoid: 

You cannot send a DUCK to EAGLE school.  (Unless, upon aborning, that hatched lucky DUCKLING sees an EAGLE!)

This is an Aesopian tale … really.

Shordee, in your alterity, you soared with the EAGLES but … all along you chose to swim and quack with us … the DUCKS.

YES, SHORDEE, YOU LOVED YOUR EAGLES BUT … 

YOU LOVED YOUR DUCKS EVEN MORE-SO.

SHORDEE

SHORDEE ... I WILL ALWAYS HEAR YOU SINGING ... 
SHORDEE ... YOU WILL BE FOREVER ON MY MIND ...
MAY YOU REST IN PEACE.

LORD, LOVE A DUCK.

CHRISTINA EAGLE SHORDEE