A Lesson on Sex: Fowl Play

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© 2009 John August

A couple weeks ago I stumbled upon a great article in Live Science about same sex behavior being found in nearly all animals. Isn’t it about time the rest of the animal kingdom gets to have their coming out party? Now while sex serves a definite function - species survival - it’s also been programmed by our creator to be a pleasurable act as incentive to insure the mating and reproductive rituals of all are routinely carried out.

There’s a lot of work involved in sex (maybe not for some), and the amount of energy expended can make it an exhaustive ordeal, as we well know by the number of times we have fallen asleep immediately afterwards. So unless we are getting something out of it, I doubt very much whether we’d bother doing it at all.

Now there are those people dumb enough to propound that the human species is the only one deriving any pleasure from sex - and that for all the other animals - it’s pure instinct. Let us put this cerebral dysfunction to rest once and for all. I learned more about life in one year sharing space with chickens and ducks than I did in four years of college. As humans, we like to regard ourselves as the sublime product of evolution on this planet. But we may have carried our self-exalted position in the animal world a bit too far, for we share more with those lesser mortals than we realize, or even care to admit. Just in regards to sex, I have personally observed these manifestations from some of our fellow creatures in the animal world: child molestation, incest, homosexuality, promiscuity, rape, and even necrophilia. And more, but I find the dictionary lacking in proper words to describe some phenomena.

I had a friend who kept his chickens and ducks in the same yard. Whenever the rooster wasn’t in sight, the top drake (male duck) would go fuck one of the hens. However, sometimes he would get caught in the act by the rooster and be chased down and suffer the humiliation of being brutally sodomized. In my own Duckland in Santa Barbara, I finally had to separate Sir Francis from his own sweet mate Waddles shortly after her ducklings hatched. For some reason unclear to me, he would go after the ducklings and try to kill them. Maybe he found them a threat to (what was before their arrival) his own territory. After hatching, it’s the mother duck who teaches the ducklings the ropes for survival; the father doesn’t want to be bothered with any of it. Does this sound familiar?

Anyway, after the ducklings got a little bigger and could take care of themselves better, I let Francis back in the yard with them. He would chase them until he got one of the unfortunates cornered, and then rape them unmercifully. He had no sexual preference as far as I could tell. During this time he wasn’t getting any from Waddles; much like any new mother, sex was the last thing on her mind, and obviously foremost on his.

I had another female duck, Samantha, who turned out to be a very strong, guiding, and nurturing mother to her brood of an even dozen ducklings. Actually she had thirteen eggs, but chose to only hatch out twelve. One may want to consider where we get some of our superstitions from. (If not now, some other time :) For the record, Francis sired her brood as well. Waddles didn’t seem to mind either. However, Sam did get upset when he began taking a feather (a duck euphemism) to Gladys, who was one of the twelve, when she got older. A year later on Sam (before she met her untimely demise as dinner for a raccoon) had turned gay and would have nothing to do with any of the drakes. She was courted by one of her daughters, Butch, during her last mating season, and obviously preferred her company. And Butch made no attempt to conceal her own identity as a bull dyke duck, often assuming an aggressive and even hostile attitude towards any of the drakes going after Sam.

A few years prior when I was caretaking a ranch in Carmel Valley, I had converted an old corn crib into a pen for my chickens. I had two roosters then, one a big Leghorn, the other a little Banty I inherited from a neighbor, and ten hens. The Leghorn ruled the roost, which meant the Banty didn’t get laid too often, in fact hardly at all. And when, on that rare occasion he snuck in a quickie, he usually got the shit kicked out of him immediately afterwards. One morning I found one of the hens had died from a cause unknown. Now that little fucker took full advantage of the situation and spent the entire day screwing the poor dead hen. Every ten minutes he would jump on her lifeless clump, fuck her, jump off, flap his wings, and then crow in his own wimpy little voice. He would strut around for a few minutes, scratch at the ground like a stud cock, and then go fuck her again. I think he may have been the first chicken in history to have foregone roosting in preference to having sex. The next morning I was out there at daybreak and he was still going at it. The Leghorn was magnanimous enough to let him have his day.

Well, there you have it. I think all these anecdotes should give us insight on how we view our own lives, and show perspective on traits we feel unique to our being human, which may very well be manifestations of lesser developed beings as well. The bottom line is: we’re really not much more evolved than our other animal brethren :)

Btw, for reference...
http://www.livescience.com/animals/090616-same-sex-animals.html