Violent ducks. Mad at boyfriend. Otherwise, it was an excellent day.

Should I even be mad? here's all the stuff I should start with "to be fair":

1) it's not that he doesn't take good care of the ducks. he takes great care of them, and they're not easy to care for. they're not affectionate animals either, so there's very little payback. but he feeds, waters and cleans up after them daily (most of these things, daily) and without complaint. he's built complicated housing, had his yard destroyed, and pissed off his neighbors (among other trials) in order to provide comfortable shelter for them.

2) the ducks don't even live with me, so it's not like i'm the greatest mom in the world. sometimes i buy them food and i see them occasionally, but they live with him and he figures out all housing/sanitation logistics (no small feat, these are barnyard animals we're dealing with), and so far his judgment in caring for them (see above) has been good.

3) i've known about today's problem for awhile. they're both males and they've had some space/sexual frustration issues since they matured and it's been a long time now that they've been fighting violently with each other.

BUT (and now -- for my case) it's a little different now, because it's not like they're fighting with each other. one just jumps on the other, pinning him to the ground, and basically tries to eat his head. is what it looks like. Ping bites at the back of Shiro's head relentlessly and if Shiro should manage an escape maneuver, Ping chases him down again and repeats the process. it's not affectionate biting (like i said, they're not affectionate, even to each other) -- it's violent biting and it looks very stressful on Shiro especially since it seems he's lost all will and/or ability to fight back. i never really got that upset when they were fighting with each other, as in both of them nipping at each other (though i have to say that this new behavior can't be called "nipping"), even though the backs of their necks were featherless and raw. they would fight sporadically and then go back to sitting next to each other like nothing happened. like i said, maybe it's because then both of them had equal footing. there wasn't one agressor and one getting constantly violated.

i don't know why i got so upset today. if i think carefully maybe some of it was an ego thing, which i shouldn't have let it be. like when i initially got upset when Ping started the chase thing, and he (E's B) said "do you have to be so loud?" or something like that. and when i voiced my concerns further about Shiro getting hurt he said "i'm sure he doesn't enjoy it but it's not like they're going to kill each other." and these things made me mad at him, instead of being mad about the actual problem.

the thing that pissed me off most, though, was his saying at some random place in my angry protest, "don't get upset." now, there are certain things he can tell me, which even though they irritate me he's justified in saying, such as when i asked/demanded that he put back the barrier that had separated them for a short time and he said that if he had to put the thing back, the ducks couldn't live with him because it just made it too hard to clean the area -- fine. shitty, but fine, one of them will have to be moved. and when he said "do you have to be so loud?" that was kind of unnecessary, but fine, let's not put on a show for the neighbors or anything. but "don't get upset"? why the fuck shouldn't i get upset? one of my pets is behaving horribly and the other is getting stomped on and bitten every day, probably more than once a day. even if they belonged to a total stranger i'd be upset to see that.

maybe you can't really relate if you were never picked on or put in a position of total helplessness, but too bad for E's B, I was, and i'm going to be upset about seeing it happen to other living things. it sucks in preschool and it sucks as a teenager and i could be wrong but i'm pretty sure it sucks for the poor duck. and if you think i'm overreacting because they're "just ducks" then all i can say is this: you can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat animals and children. since we're discussing ducks here, i'll just say animals.

i'm not directly addressing anyone in particular, i'm just kind of majorly irritated right now. as to whether i should have taken so much of it out on him i'm still not sure (see above "to be fair" list), because like i said maybe i turned the focus of it from duck welfare to how the ducks' welfare made me feel. but he definitely should not have told me not to get upset. i will go call him and tell him that when i'm a little calmer.

Also today was Zac's blessing (I can still hear Katie's sweet voice informing every guest in the pew of this) but I'll write about it in a separate entry because it doesn't belong in an angry essay with terrible language.