[Uci (pronounced Oochi and meaning honey) is a yellow Labrador dog first introduced in the Polder series of stories.]

Chapter 5. In Her Majesty’s Service

Uci’s Duck

If an unusual event occurred long ago and far away, and the modern day narrator attempts to set it in its proper context in time and place, it inevitably takes on the peripheral trappings and style of a 'shaggy dog' story. Well, this story happened long ago and far away and needs to be placed in its proper context in time and place to be properly comprehended by the reader. Therefore, it must unavoidably slip into the category of a 'shaggy dog' story, although in this case, the principal actor was a duck and the dog was only in a supporting role.

The story is set in Namwala district of pre-independence Zambia in 1963 - the year of the great flood on the Kafue river. In the years before the dam was built, the Kafue flooded out annually over the vast wetlands, locally known as the Flats. The flood of 1963 was greater than ever before and the dykes of the Kafue Polder Scheme, where I worked, were overwhelmed and the farmlands within were submerged beneath fifteen feet of water. Most of the staff threw in the towel and drifted off to other jobs elsewhere, but my services were offered free of charge to the colonial Government. The Government didn't know what to do with me either, so they searched around for a district without an agricultural officer and found Namwala a couple of hundred miles further up the Flats. That's where they sent me, and that's where I started and finished my brief career in Her Brittanic Majesty's Colonial Service.

I drove to Namwala in my little sports car. Beside me in the adjacent bucket seat sat Uci, and in a basket at Uci’s feet slept Titan, my enormous tabby cat. I parked under the Jacaranda trees outside the small government office and went in to see the District Commissioner. The DC, who was a naval officer by trade, had no more idea of what to do with me than anybody else, but he allocated me a house overlooking the lagoon and an office at the boma, as all district offices were then called. He suggested that I get 'settled in' and then go out 'in search of agriculture' in the district.

To 'settle in', I went to the only store in Namwala and bought the only bale of cloth on offer - a heavy, green material. On the verandah of the store sat a tailor in front of a treadle sewing machine - Singer, of course. Over the next week the tailor made me curtains for my house and office, three table cloths, some table napkins, cushion covers, bed spreads, three bush-jackets and three pairs of shorts all from the same material. Mine was a very green world.

In front of my house, the lawn swept down to the tree-lined banks of the lagoon which connected with the Kafue river some ten miles away. Beneath the trees was moored a huge Barotse barge. Fully forty-five or fifty feet long and no more than four or five feet wide, the huge craft was flat bottomed, built of heavy, hard-wood planking and driven by an under-powered out-board motor. When the Kafue was in flood it was impossible to get around Namwala district except by boat to the nearest high land and then walk. It was easy enough to drive a boat up and down the main channel meandering through the Flats, but it was impossible to reach the high land at the edge of the Flats without punters who were familiar with the water-ways and able to pole the barge anything up to thirty miles through reed-beds, lily ponds and flooded grasslands. I always carried eight punters with me on those long journeys. I also carried an engine operator, a factotum and a cook, who answered to the name Rigor Mortis. His native name sounded like that, but I couldn't get my tongue round it.

The great barge was always loaded in the same order. In the prow sat Uci on her travelling bed and behind her was my camp table and chair overhung by an enormous multi-coloured umbrella. Around me were my books, binoculars, maps, air photographs, shot-gun and that sort of thing - these journeys lasted for anything up to twelve hours. Behind me and presided over by Rigor Mortis and the factotum were my tin boxes with food, bedding and cooking pots, and behind them the heavy gear like tents and bags of maize meal to feed the carriers at our destination. Behind the heavy baggage came the punters with their poles, paddles, boxes, sacks, three-legged cooking pots, bundles of dried fish and squawking chickens in coops. At the rear sat the engine operator on a fishing stool surrounded by jerry cans, syphon pipes, oil cans and tool-boxes. He carried a small, black umbrella to ward off rain and sun. This then was the wobbly craft that pushed slowly out onto the glassy, mist-shrouded lagoon early in the morning at the beginning of every journey 'in search of agriculture' in Namwala district.

It was whilst heading home in this strange craft after a long sojourn in Musungwa’s country looking for signs of agriculture that my punters lost the trail through the reeds and began to cast about. I asked them to drop me off on an anthill that stuck up above the floodwaters so that I could stretch my legs while they went off in search of the channel. I walked the ten yards round my island a couple of times before stretching out on the grass to doze in the sun and could hear the voices of the punters fading as they went further away. I could also hear Uci snuffling around in the shallow water at the base of the anthill. It was her retrieving sound - she was a very good and well trained retriever. Within minutes she was standing next to me shaking muddy water all over my face before dumping a dead, wet duck on my chest. I sat up and examined it. It was a Pink-billed Teal, unmarked, but dead for some time. I thought nothing of it, put it aside and lay back. But, minutes later, Uci was back again, this time with a very live duckling, no more than three or four days old. I put it in my upturned hat and, fearing there may be more orphans out there somewhere, sent her back for more. Time after time she returned, sometimes with as many as three ducklings held lightly between her teeth. By the time the barge returned to pick me up, we had accumulated 12 ducklings in my hat.

Back at home I made a large enclosure in my garden to hold the ducklings and visited them frequently to ensure their wellbeing. I soon noticed that whenever I went out to inspect the ducklings, one of them would always detach itself from the little flock and follow Uci's passage round the pen. After a day or two, I took that duckling out of the pen and, sure enough, it followed the dog everywhere she went round the garden. This behaviour is now called 'imprinting', and is, apparently, not uncommon. Well, at the time of which I am writing, we in Africa, without radios, newspapers, television, internet or any other communication other than the bush telegraph, didn't know about 'imprinting'. All I knew at the time was that the duckling was so besotted with the dog that I was forced to let it out each day to follow the dog around the garden, returning it to its enclosure at night.

Then, after a few days of this strange behaviour, something really bizarre happened. Like the proverbial post-man who bites the dog, the dog became 'imprinted' upon the duck and the two became totally inseparable - both were besotted with each other. And when I put the duck in the enclosure at night, the dog jumped in and took it out again. When the duckling couldn't get up the long flight of steps onto the verandah, the dog picked it up and carried it up the steps. And worse than that, the dog carried the duckling onto her bed - my pristine green settee in the green sitting room with the green curtains and green table cloths. After a few weeks the duck was able to flutter its way up the steps and onto the settee and later still it flew straight in through the open door or window to crash-land on the settee.

'How sweet', I can hear all you bird lovers saying. But, you forget one thing - ducks shit in their beds.

It was not long before my green settee, the centre-piece of my living room, was as white as driven snow, resembling the ground below a rookery. And all the other chairs where the duck often perched were streaked with white like the rock face below a vulture's nest. In this disgusting tip, the dog and the duck snuggled up together each night to dream their separate dreams.

The little duck, Uci and I walked to the boma every morning; the distance was no more than 400 yards. The walk was difficult for the duckling at first, but quickly she got past the scampering, fluttering stage and flew ahead to wait for us at every corner in the track. At the boma the two inseperables wandered around the grounds together, occasionally poking their heads into offices seeking human company. Mostly, they were well received and given biscuits and other goodies before being chased away in case the duck shat on the polished red floors - all colonial Government floors were polished red and curved up at the wall.

All the other ducks in the enclosure had long since flown away across the lagoon to the Flats beyond by the time I first discovered that Uci's little friend had a distinctly murkier side to its character. There was nothing it loved more than duck shooting. Like all gun dogs, Uci picked up cues from my behaviour that she knew signalled an impending duck shoot and, like all gun dogs, she would go wild with excitement. Well, the little duck did likewise. I don't know whether it picked up cues from me or its dog, but its behaviour was distinctly one of excitement. It would stand on tiptoes on the edge of the settee, arch its neck, shit copiously on the cushions behind and flap its wings in anticipation. Sometimes it even flew around the room.

We would walk together along the edge of the lagoon in single file - me with my shot-gun, followed by Uci, and Uci followed by her little duck. The first thing the duck learned from its dog was not to fear the bang of the gun. On the contrary, it learned that the bang of the gun heralded a wild flapping chase through the lily ponds and reed beds in search of the quarry. The duck always tried to emulate the dog so that when I sent the dog off in search of the quarry, the duck espoused its superior means of locomotion and tried to swim and flap along behind the swimming dog. Only when it was left far behind did the duck take to the air to fly in little awkward flapping circles round the dog, frequently re-alighting on the water to continue the pursuit 'on foot'. When Uci finally found the quarry and began to swim back to the high land where I waited, the duck followed in her wake as fast as it could go, only rising into the air if it lagged too far behind. On the shore, the quarry was placed in my hand by Uci and I congratulated her with a huge pat on the shoulder whilst she divested herself of all the water in her coat by shaking it onto me. Having received her congratulations she immediately went off to congratulate her duck by rolling it over with her nose and feet and generally acting boisterously around it. Often the duck took to the air to avoid these celebrations, but its squawking quack as it flapped around the head of its dog, left no doubt that it was celebrating, too.

One day about nine months after the little duck joined my family, I woke to find it had gone. Only Uci was on the verandah to watch the sunrise over the Flats that morning when Rigor Mortis brought the tea and biscuits. Normally we were three. Uci always had a bowl of tea, with five sugars and a dunked biscuit, the duck had crumbled biscuits and some of Uci's tea.

All day we searched desperately for Uci's duck, but it had vanished without trace. They always slept cuddled up together on the settee so no wild animal could have got Uci’s duck, despite all the doors and windows being open all night. There were only two possible explanations for the sudden disappearance – a change of heart, or something much more sinister. From the following two endings you are free to choose the one you think most likely, or the one you would prefer:

A. It was the time of the great migrations, the time of the changing seasons. Nestled down between the legs of her dog, the little duck heard cries and calls on a moonlit night that excited a deeper passion in her than her dog could ever understand. The little duck responded by nibbling on her dog's ear and shuffling forward onto the edge of the settee where it flapped its wings and silently took off through the open window across the lagoon and Flats beyond, and into the pink of the dawn to join 'the call of the wild'.

B. It was the time of the great hunger, the time when men were short of food. Rigor Mortis was the only person Uci would have let into the house without contest. Of course, she welcomed him when he arrived in the dead of night to take the duck away. Uci yielded up her duck without resistance to the friend who fed her every day. Rigor Mortis wrung the neck of Uci's duck, plucked it, cooked it and fed it to his hungry family.

Snakes and Ladders

In wide-eyed astonishment, I watched as yellow, blue, red and purple pettles fluttered down from above, covering my head and shoulders as if I were the groom emerging from a church with a bride on my arm. But I wasn’t a groom - I was a novice civil servant sitting, bare-foot, in a Government-issue arm chair with green covers. In my lap I cradled a smoking shot-gun.

The sound of breaking glass continued for some time outside the room as remnant sawn-off bottles, tins and jars rolled across the top of the fridge and crashed to the floor below. My enormous tabby cat, Titan, who had been sleeping on the Government-issue chair opposite me, fled the room through his customary escape hatch, the window that opened onto the fridge on the back verandah. The speed of his exist and his enormous size cleared any remaining debris off the top of the fridge and sent it crashing to the floor below. Then there was silence, except for the hiss of gas escaping from the punctured pipes at the back of the fridge outside the shattered window.

The seven foot long spitting cobra was dead. Head-blasted-off dead.

Uci, also covered in flower petals, leapt into life from her supine position on the Government-issue settee with green covers and advanced cautiously on the writhing, head-less, long bit of the snake. She quickly picked up the blood spoor of the short bit containing the head and tracked it to its final resting place wedged between the leg of the desk and the wall five or six feet away. Groggily rising to my feet, I called her off and examined the mayhem around me.

The problem, I quickly established, was the red-polished floor curving up where it met the wall as was customary in all colonial government buildings. The pellets from the shot-gun had cut the snake’s head off before ricocheting back off the curve of the floor. They had decapitated an untidy vase of flowers that Rigor-mortis had picked in the garden in a vain hope of bringing a modicum of civilisation to my house. Travelling on in an ever-widening spread, they smashed through the window at the back of the room and demolished all the bottles and jars standing on top of the fridge that stood outside the window. The cat, following close behind the pellets and nearly as fast, finished off any survivors. Beyond the fridge was a set of step-ladders on which stood a hurricane light that burned with a low flame all night to keep away evil spirits and welcome late night visitors. That, too, was demolished and the reservoire punctured. Apart from that, nobody except the snake was hurt.

Only a few minutes earlier, I had watched, horrified, as the enormous, gunmetal black, snake slithered slowly into the room from the front verandah and began to make its way along the far wall of the sitting room. I had just finished my lunch and was reading quietly. My immediate concern was for the dog sleepng peacefully on the settee. If she should become aware of the snake it could spell disaster for her. Any attempt by her to investigate further would cause the snake to rear up and spit in her eyes, possibly blinding her permanently. I knew that spitting cobras of that size could spit an extraordinary distance with deadly accuracy. I decided that I must kill the snake by any means before the dog woke up. My shot-gun hung in a rack on the wall behind me. The question was how to get to it without alerting the dog. If there’s one thing a gun dog knows intuitively it’s when its master goes near a gun, or even thinks about going near a gun.

Slowly I stood up on the cushions of my chair and reached back for the gun and cartridge bag. That part was completed noiselessly and I sank back into my seat. Without a sound I opened the lock and placed one cartridge in the chamber – I dared not risk the click of another cartridge going into the second barrel. There would be only one chance. I also knew that the clonk of closing the gun would wake the dog instantly, so got it half way up to my shoulder before I closed it and fired almost simultaneously. I never gave a moments thought to the chaos that might be caused by the curvature of the floor at the base of the wall.