Tim Cahill - Pecked to Death by Ducks

Pecked to Death by Ducks works because of the heady combination of Cahills relentless curiosity, quirky intelligence, precise observation and willingness to make a total, flaming fool of himself. Cahill has all the moves.

Boston Sunday Globe

Tim Cahill is the working-class Paul Theroux. [He] delights in finding stories too peculiar to be labeled merely offbeat.

The New York Times Book Review

Like some roll n roll philosopher-jock, Tim Cahill walks the line dividing beauty and terror in the great outdoors. Exploring Americas deepest cave, pirouetting through a bison herd, and hanging from a half-mile-high cliff face, Cahill turns reading into a spectator sport.

Entertainment Weekly

Hes as irreverent as everand as entertaining. Cahills adventures will keep you enthralled. And the fact that hes hilarious doesnt hurt any, either.

Sunday Oklahoman

Cahill [has] the skill of a genuine writer, the funny bone of a wryly self-effacing comic, and the sensitivity of a committed environmentalist.

Seattle Times/Post-Intelligencer

From one wild situation to the next, Cahill keeps his cool, writing with the precision of John McPhee and Joan Didion tempered by a Monty Pythonesque sense of the absurd. Great stuff from a writer who knows what travel writing ought to be: realistic, informed and always entertaining [Youll] enjoy this collection again and again.

San Diego Union-Tribune

Pecked to Death by Ducks is a great read.

St. Petersburg Times

You might call him crazy. You might call him reckless. But youll definitely call him hilarious. Adventure-travel crash-dummy Tim Cahill is to travel writing what P. J. ORourke is to political commentary.

Hartford Courant

BURIED DREAMS
JAGUARS RIPPED MY FLESH
A WOLVERINE IS EATING MY LEG
ROAD FEVER
PASS THE BUTTERWORMS
HOLD THE ENLIGHTENMENT

TIM CAHILL
Pecked to Death by Ducks

Tim Cahill is the author of numerous books, including A Wolverine Is Eating My Leg, Jaguars Ripped My Flesh, and Pass the Butterworms. He is an editor at large for Outside magazine, and his work appears in National Geographic Adventure, The New York Times Book Review, and other national publications. He lives in Montana.

FIRST VINTAGE DEPARTURE EDITION, FEBRUARY 1994

Copyright 1993 by Tim Cahill

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Viking Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover by Random House, Inc., New York, in 1993.

The articles in this work were originally published in different form in The Discovery Channel Magazine, GEO, Islands Magazine, National Geographic, Outside, Rolling Stone, the San Francisco Examiner, and Travel Holiday.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Henry Holt & Company, Inc., for permission to reprint four lines from Eight OClock from The CollectedPoems of A.E. Housman. Copyright 1922 by Henry Holt and Company, Inc. Copyright 1950 Barclays Bank Ltd. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cahill, Tim.
Pecked to death by ducks / Tim Cahill. 1st Vintage departures ed.
p. cm. (Vintage departures)
eISBN: 978-0-307-77841-3
1. Adventure stories, American. I. Title.
[PS3553.A365P4 1994]
814.54 dc20 93-6328

Author photograph Marion Ettlinger

v3.1

For Linnea Larson

There are no ducks in this book, except, I think, a fleeting mention in the Bali story. Its worth noting, however, that my Balinese friend Nyoman Wirata is pleased to refer to me as Sanghyang Bebec. This, loosely translated, means God-entranced duck. Or, more to Nyomans point, funny duck.

Ducks, I think, are funny on the face of it. Leda might be raped by a swan. We can sort of handle that. But a duck? Raped by a duck? Get outta here. You cant have a noble myth about someone being raped by a duck. People would laugh.

In Bali I was examining ceremonies in which men and women, overcome with religious zeal, fell into trances and acted like various animals: horses, monkeys, pigs. These people were said to be sanghyang. A man who becomes entranced and stomps like a horse is called sanghyang djaran.

I had noticed that there were domestic ducks all over Bali. Children brought them back from a day of feeding in the rice paddies: Youd see a lovely child with a white flag in her hand leading a row of waddling self-important ducks over the levee just at sunset.

Why, I asked Nyoman, is it that I never see someone fall into a trance and become bebec, a duck? Nyoman said he really didnt know. It just wasnt done. Nobody knew how to act like a duck.

I explained that in my country, there was a semireligious figurevery famousnamed Donald, who was a duck. Every child in the United States can talk like Donald.

Show me, Nyoman said.

And so I squawked and croaked like Donald Duck to show Nyoman Wirata how a man might become sanghyang bebec. This, apparently, was the funniest thing that ever happened in Bali. Everywhere we wentand we went all over the islandNyoman begged me to do sanghyang bebec.

Do angry bebec, Nyoman begged, and Id throw one of Donalds hysterical fits. Nyomans stomach hurt from laughing.

But thats about it for ducks in this book. There are one or two stories that needed to be told for reasons that will become apparent. Most of the pieces collected here, however, are about travel, or about people Ive met traveling. The last few stories are about the business of risk.

Ive said this before, but it bears repeating: I believe all these stories exist in the realm of certain shared dreams. I think there was a time when all of us saw the world in terms of exotic travel and thrilling adventure. We want to be Tarzan or Huckleberry Finn, Richard Halliburton, Clyde Beatty, even Marlin Perkins. We want to be Dian Fossey or Jane Goodall or Amelia Earhart. Somewhere along the lineusually on the first day of the first real jobwe find that those dreams have gone dormant. Since they were the dreams of our youth, we try to discard them entirely, in the interest of maturity.

But it doesnt happen. Dreams are indestructible. They seethe and roil beneath the surface. There is a vague sense of discontent, and different people deal with it in different ways. Scorn is popular. Mention that trip down the Amazon youve been thinking about, the cabin you want to build in the woods, and someone is sure to call you a horses ass. Other people have a way of making our dreams seem small. The urge to realize any early dream is labeled with names that suggest psychic aberration: the big chill, a midlife crisis, a second childhood.