Bob Tarte - Enslaved by Ducks

All of us who feel a deep emotional connection with animals will respond to this book. As Bob Tarte realizes, there is no drug or therapy as effective as an animal who loves you.

Jeffrey Masson, author of When Elephants Weep

A beautiful, honest, hilarious, and touching book about the subtle and blatant ways animal companions take over our lives. Its impossible to read Enslaved by Ducks and not fall just a little in love with Bob Tarte, his charming, heroic wife, Linda, and their menagerie.

Jana Murphy, author of The Secret Lives of Dogs

As the adoring owner or former owner of dogs, cats, parrots, rabbits, and six hundred gallons of saltwater fish, I was utterly delighted with Enslaved by Ducks. Bob Tarte profoundly understands and brilliantly articulates the extraordinary connections between humans and animals.

Robert Olen Butler

If you thought one backyard duck was much like another, wait till you meet the tiny, indomitable Peggy, who laid down her life to save her fellow ducks. What May Sarton did for cats in The Fur Person, Bob Tarte does for ducks. And destructive parrots and fierce rabbits and a talking baby starling and a whole house and yard full of demanding oddballs that, by comparison, will make you feel better about your own domestic life.

Barbara Holland, author of They Went Whistling

I started to read a page and ended up reading the book! As Bob Tarte shows, with animal after animal, its not enough in the end to provide just the basics of food, water, and shelter; you have to love them like family. And hes right: if you are an animal lover, your bond with animals goes far deeper than just companionship. It really is a way of life.

Marty Becker, D.V.M., Good Morning America

In his hilarious debut, Tartea city boy at heartchronicles how his blissful, animal-free life took an unexpectedly raucous turn when his nature-loving wife decided to share their spacious, early-twentieth-century Michigan farmhouse with a menagerie of furry and feathery friends: a malicious bunny with an appetite for live wires, a homicidal turkey, a horny ring-necked dove, a trash-talking African grey parrot, and more than a dozen other quirky creatures. Though each new animal is wackier and more demanding than the last, Tarte rebels against his urban instincts and learns to love his personal zoo. After reading this delightfully punchy account, you may never look at Fido the same way again.

Entertainment Weekly

Hilarious and poignant not just for animal lovers, but for all who have loved another living thing.

The Charlotte Observer

The wholly disarming story of a music reviewers move to the country, where he gradually, inexorably gathered about him a ragtag band of animals. His furred and feathered companions took Tarte out of himself, gave him a satisfying flinch of pleasure, taught him to live within chaos, introduced him to the strange ceremonies of animal care. As well, they pulled his chain, broke his trust, ate up his time and patience, showed him a thing or two about violence, and died on him. His chronicle of those processes ties them all neatly together, and it sounds like love. Why didnt anyone warn me? Tarte asks about the consequences of sharing a home with animals. Its a good thing they didnt, or we might not have had this affecting debut.

Kirkus Reviews

This rich and funny personal account of Bob Tartes noticeably never-ending (and largely inadvertent) acquisition of pets will warm your heart. For anyone who has ever opened heart and home to an animal or experienced the love-hate relationship of being owned by pets.

The Dallas Morning News

With dead-on character portraits, Tarte keeps readers laughing about unreliable pet store proprietors, a duck named Hector who doesnt like water, an amorous dove named Howard, a foster-mother goose, patient veterinarians and increasingly bewildered friends. Tarte has an ordinary-Joe voice that makes each chapter a true pleasure, while revealing a sophisticated vision of animals and their relationship to humans.

Publishers Weekly

Heres a challenge: Try reading Bob Tartes Enslaved by Ducks without laughing out loud over and over. Even if youre not a pet person, it simply cant be done.

Sanford Herald

Bob Tartes deprecating humor, honesty, sarcasm and fine style will keep you turning pages as you fall in love with the animal family he and his wife, Linda, have adopted. Youll be thankful Tarte endured the domestic chaos that comes with being owned by a multitude of pets.

Grand Rapids Press

Hilarious. Part Gerald Durrell and part Bill Bryson, this heartwarming book will find many readers among Rascal and That Quail, Robert devotees.

Booklist

A book that will be enjoyed by pet owners, animal lovers, and anybody who knows what its like to have room for more than one critter in his heart.

Council Bluffs (Iowa) Daily Nonpareil

Highly recommended for those who appreciate the value of good humor and a positive outlook on life.

Library Journal

by BOB TARTE

Published by

ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL

Post Office Box 2225

Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of

Workman Publishing

225 Varick Street

New York, New York 10014

2003 by Bob Tarte. All rights reserved.

First paperback edition, October 2004.

Originally published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in 2003.

Printed in the United States of America.

Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Limited.

Design by Anne Winslow.

While the people, places, and events described in the following pages are real, location and human names have been changed for the sake of privacy.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tarte, Bob.

Enslaved by ducks / by Bob Tarte.1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-1-56512-351-9 (HC)

1. PetsMichiganLowellAnecdotes. 2. AnimalsMichigan

LowellAnecdotes. 3. Human-animal relationshipsMichigan

LowellAnecdotes 4. Tarte, Bob. I. Title.

SF416.T37 2003

636.08870977455dc22 2003057756

ISBN-13: 978-1-56512-450-9 (PB)

10 9

To my wonderful wife, Linda, who somehow keeps the chaos at bay.

(Listed more or less in order of appearance and by type)

INDOOR ANIMALS

Bunnies

Binky: stubborn dwarf Dutch troublemaker

Bertha: feral Netherland dwarf, captured in suburbia

Bertie: Netherland dwarf, brother to Rollo

Rollo: Netherland dwarf, brother to Bertie

Walter: large-headed Checker Giant, rescued from barn

Parrots

Ollie: ill-tempered brotogeris pocket parrot

Stanley Sue: gender-switching African grey Timneh

Dusty: chatty, author-biting Congo African grey

Other Birds

Howard: amorous ring-neck dove

Chester: non-hand-tamed canary

Elliott: feisty canary, successor to Chester

Farley: parakeet senior citizen

Rossy: Ollies female parakeet suitor