By CRAIG J. CLARK
Well, if you have to know, it all started the spring of my freshman year at Trenton State College (now the College of New Jeresy) when I wrote a play called Pardon Me, But You're Sitting On My Duck. It actually wasn't a play so much as it was a collection of sketches I had written during the school year along with a few old chestnuts I polished off and incorporated into the running order. I submitted the play to the student theater group and was given the opportunity to direct it in the fall.
The centerpiece of the show (which actually came at the very beginning but I don't feel like quibbling right now) was the title sketch, which was one of the last pieces to be written. Most of the other scenes had been conceived independently and -- aside from some brief linking bits -- none of them had anything to do with ducks whatsoever. At least, that's how it was on paper. During the course of rehearsals, however, several of my actors found ways of sneaking ducks into the other scenes, especially once the actual prop ducks arrived.
They were actually duck slippers, which had to be sewed shut to prevent one overzealous actor from wearing them onstage during one of his scenes. Other than that, as long as the joke worked, I allowed them free reign to incorporate as many ducks as they could into the action. As one of my professors summed up the resulting performance, it was as if someone had given me the assignment of writing a series of scenes, most of which had something or other to do with a duck. This could not have been further from the truth, but I wasn't about to contradict him.
For my pains, I received a stuffed duck from my cast, and expected the whole duck business to end there. It didn't end there. Around the same time Pardon Me was going into production, I started up a comic strip called This Happens in The Signal, the student newspaper. I had actually been trying to get the strip off the ground for some time, but while I could write, I couldn't draw worth a dickie bird. Fortunately, The Signal's features editor gave me the number of an artist who could draw but didn't have time to write a strip. Her name was Elena R. La Rocca (although it's now Elena Nazarro because she had since gotten married). It was a marriage made in heaven (not her marriage -- I meant the marriage of my words and her art -- although her marriage is doing just fine, actually). We got seven strips in the first semester (a minor achievement, actually, as we only seemed to run when one of the other 'regular' strips didn't show up).
Anyway, ducks found a way of waddling their way into the comic strip just as they had the other scenes in Pardon Me. In fact, the fifth strip of our second semester was the infamous duck joke. The joke was cute -- if a teensy bit obtuse -- and fun to write. It wasn't until the third and final semester that ducks became an integral part of This Happens.
Midway through the semester I had one of my characters find a wounded duck by a lake and adopt it, naming it Mitchell. (I had intended to do a Streetcar Named Desire joke at some point but didn't have the time and besides, only three people on campus would have gotten it.) Mitchell was featured in three other strips (including the finale), but he was not the only duck to show up in This Happens. The next-to-last strip featured the first appearance of Craig J. Quack ever and Elena was, in fact, the first person to ever draw this ducky alter ego of mine. Quack even received writing credit for this particular strip, something of which I thought little at the time.
Since then, over the years I have taken to signing my name 'Craig J. Quack' from time to time (but never on official documents). When the post office issued the 29-cent Wood Duck stamps, that's all I ever bought. I now have, in addition to the stuffed animal I received from the cast of Pardon Me, two more made out of wood, one made out of plastic that quacks when it detects motion, two ducks that act as candle holders-- Heck, I've got a whole bunch of ducks. I cannot abide duck hunting and the thought of eating one of the creatures in a restaurant revulses me. I have ducks on my shower curtain, a duck calendar, and anything else ducky that I can get my hands on. The mere existence of this web page (and The Duck Pond, to which you'll find a link below), attests to the fact that ducks are much on my mind, even now -- six years after I first wrote those immortal words, 'Er, pardon me...'
This has been one man's opinion. If you happen to like shooting
ducks and other waterfowl for pleasure, that's your own lookout. Just
be wary of the time when the ducks shall arm themselves and start
shooting back. It's sooner than you may think.