“A viral photograph of a dead duck floating in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has intensified scrutiny of the landmark’s recent $14 million renovation, fueling a mounting debate over water quality, chemical treatments, and alleged vandalism at the historic site.” — Newsweek
Dear Duck,
I am sorry this happened to you in a place designed to make people think about sacrifice in America.
I confess that may be too grand a sentence for a duck. You did not paddle through the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to participate in a national metaphor. To you, this was not a site of national remembrance, civic pilgrimage, or the weigh-in for a nationally televised cage match bloodsport. It was simply water. Long, publicly accessible water, sitting calmly beneath a large silent man in a massive chair.
A duck could do worse, you must have thought.
You did not arrive to comment on algae blooms, haphazard chemical treatments, peeling paint, or whether a $14 million renovation should remain visibly renovated for longer than a few days. You were not trying to enter the national conversation. You were not making a point or, I assume, posting one to Bluesky.
You were simply there because ducks go where the water is. This is one of the nicer things about ducks. You have a practical theology. If there is water, enter it. If there is bread, inhale it. If there are small ducklings nearby, arrange yourself into a soft, vigilant flotilla and continue.
That is the beginning and end of what a duck understands, and it is possible this makes ducks the more honest species. You saw a pool beneath a stone monument and accepted the scene at face value. That should have been enough. Instead, you became part of us. I am sorry for that, too.
I should say here that I have not always been good to ducks. When I was a child, I threw a jelly bean at a duck in the Boston Public Garden. I don’t remember why. There is no satisfying explanation now, and I doubt there was one then. I was a child. There was a duck. In my tiny hand, there was, somehow, a single jelly bean. In the unfinished machinery of my nascent brain, there arose a command to throw candy at that innocent mallard’s satin green head.
The jelly bean hit the duck squarely, near the eye. There was a small, muted thwop. Nothing dramatic. Just the unmistakable sound of colorful sugar striking a living creature that had done nothing to deserve the ire of my boredom. The duck reacted in the confused, offended way ducks often do, and then went on being a duck. I did not go on quite as easily.
Since then, I have considered ducks sacrosanct. This is not a belief system I can defend theologically, or even consistently. I still eat poultry. But ducks occupy a protected space in me. They are not to be bothered or startled for amusement. They are not to be struck with candy, pebbles, or the ambient stupidity of powerful humans with access to global social media platforms.
So, when I saw you floating there, I felt something rise up. Not just sadness. Recognition, maybe. Shame, certainly. The sense that humans have been making ducks pay attention to us for a very long time, and ducks, to their credit, have shown almost no interest in returning the favor.
We do not know what killed you. It would be folly to pretend otherwise. There has already been enough certainty poured into that pool. What I know is smaller: The water is green. The paint is failing. And somewhere, in all of it, you were floating very still in a place built for reflection.
This is, unfortunately, something we humans do to the dead. We ask them to keep going. We use them to explain systems they did not build and failures they did not survive. A fallen soldier is made to speak for policy. A murdered schoolchild is made to speak for gun laws. A sodden bird, floating lifeless in a public pool, becomes a commentary on water quality, federal competence, political vanity, and the general condition of a backsliding democracy during a humid week in late June.
I admit that, at the end of the day, you were a duck, not a martyr. You had webbed feet and waterproof feathers and, presumably, no known opinion of “American Flag Blue.” It would be insulting to make you noble simply because we have become grotesque.
Still, I hope that before the end, you had known better water. A pond, somewhere quiet, with swaying reeds. A patch of shade. A morning in which no one photographed you for clout or generated AI duck-slop for their LinkedIn hot take. I hope you had once lowered your head beneath the cool surface and come up with something ordinary and sufficient. I hope you had the simple duck pleasure of moving through water that was only water.
That is not much. But it may be more than we are currently prepared to offer.
Quack quack,
Jack
