Tonight was my last night with my family - early in the morning they return to the US and I go to Vienna. So, of course, we had a delightful, multi-course meal. My sister insisted ahead of time that she wasn't hungry but ordered 3 courses with the best of them.
During dinner, the conversation turned to her upcoming year in Australia, working on a ranch. She expressed a wish to participate in the hunting and subsequent eating of a kangaroo, which I can absolutely relate to. When I was in Argentina I decided if I was going to eat living things, I should be ok with killing them too. I never actually learned to butcher something humanely, but I avidly watched the expert slaughter of several rabbits.
But I digress.
My grandma interjects at this point, telling us "Oh babies, I have a story for you. About a duck"
A little background is needed here. My grandma was born in Chile, moved at some point to Argentina where she met my grandpa, who was an OB/GYN, and they later moved to Paraguay where my dad spent most of his childhood. So, in Paraguay, they had a milkman. And it just so happens that one day my grandpa delivered this man's child. One day, the milk man showed up at the door bearing not only dairy but also a live duck, to say thank you. "It was horrible!" says my grandma. It's feet were bound, and as she took the duck, she dropped the poor thing. Then, not knowing what to do with it, she took it to the utility room in the back (where the washing machine was) and just left it there. When my grandpa got home she asked him to please kill it for her because she didn't know how, but he protested that he was a healer! He couldn't be killing things! So three or four weeks went by.
At this point in the story, I interject. "So, you just left the duck in that room for a month? With it's feet still tied up?" Yes. "Did you feed it, or did it just die of starvation?" She fed it.
At this point, we are cracking up, unable to contain our laughter. My grandma is laughing so hard she can barely continue the story. But somehow, she does.
After a month passed, she decided she just had to do something about this duck. Clearly. So she put the duck in a shopping back and schlepped all the way across town to her mother's house, where she showed my grandma how to butcher a duck. "It was so horrible!" she said again. And after that she doesn't remember what happened - presumably they cooked the duck and ate it.
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