A Lesson From Up North About Cooperation

Let me tell you a story from the north woods, one that sounds unbelievable but yet is completely true. There were witnesses, and those there at the time know it happened just like this:

It was a sunny summer day on Lake Superior’s south shore, and a group of ducks with their ducklings, perhaps three broods, were swimming together and skimming food over the sand bar in front of our cabin. Cute scene but not all that interesting, except for the eagle that hovered high above them. Clearly, he planned to interrupt their vegetarian lunch with his plans for a distinctly non-vegan meal.

It was probably the eagle’s shadow crossing over them that alerted the ducks, and this is when the unpredicted behavior began. The ducks started swimming toward the center of their group, gathering themselves into a tight circle. As they clumped together, those of us on shore thought that they were simply making the menu selection easier for the predator circling them above. With a dive into such a compact group, the eagle was almost certain to fly back up with something in his talons. As we watched this contest between ducks and their ducklings and a fellow bird that is much higher in the food chain than they, something we had never seen before occurred right in front of us.

As expected, the eagle went into a swooping dive that looked to be aimed for the heart of the bunched-up prey. As he descended to about four feet above them —ready to scoop up a meal — the adult ducks acted in unison, as though they were one duck, swinging their wings deep into the lake water and, again as though they were one, throwing the water they had gathered in their wings straight up into their tormentor’s flight path. The resulting water fountain, rising at least five feet into the air, engulfed the head of the eagle.  

With nostrils and eyes both suddenly filled with water, the eagle was completely confounded in his effort to get a duck. He rose back up into the air, empty handed.

It’s impossible to know what was going through his mind at this moment, but certainly determination was part of his thoughts, as he tried twice more to dive into the closely grouped ducks, trying to come away with just one of them. The waterfall scene was repeated each time, perfectly timed to thwart him. He finally gave up and flew back across the bay.

Sportsmen to whom I’ve related this event have responded with only quizzical looks, and one voiced his skepticism with a simple, “You saw this yourself, right?”  Yes, and there are others who saw it as well.

We witnessed a group of ducks, not generally thought to be very cerebral, execute a lifesaving maneuver that required planning, innovative and uncharacteristic action, and a very precise sense of timing. The real key to all of this working correctly, of course, was working in cooperation. One duck, or even half the ducks, could not have pulled this off. They had to work together.

Thinking back on this, I can’t help but wonder why it is that a group of ducks exhibited the very qualities of thought and cooperation that we should be seeing —but which we don’t — from our representatives in Washington and Madison.

Certainly both capitols are in need of a lesson in working together for the common good. If some ducks in northern Wisconsin can do this successfully, to the benefit of all of them, why can’t the people we elected do this for us?

They should come up north.  Maybe they could learn something.