Some personal backstory on Phil Robertson's phrase "They'll pick your ducks." [View all]

[Are_grits_groceries]

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His advice for a happy marriage is to make like R. Kelly and hang out in high-school parking lots. "You got to marry these girls when they are about 15 or 16. They'll pick your ducks." (No, "pick your ducks" is not sexual innuendo—Robertson is talking about cleaning the feathers off of dead birds, a miserable task often left to women to perform.) "You need to check with mom and dad about that of course," sage Robertson wisely advises, but he does not explain how to convince the parents of teenage girls to let them marry grown men who are tired of cleaning their own dead birds.
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http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/12/30/phil_robertson_on_marriage_duck_dynasty_star_advised_men_to_find_15_year.html#

Before Robertson issued these disgusting immoral words, I knew what 'picking ducks' meant. My Mama had told me a story that illustrated what a nasty task this was.

Chickens, ducks, and other birds have to be picked of their feathers before they are eaten. This is not an easy task. I have picked chickens and that's enough for me. The big feathers you see are the easy part. The real work begins when you remove the pin feathers. They are the tiny new feathers just breaking through the skin. You can torch them with a brûlée torch, use hot wax, or just pull them out with pliers one by one.

Ducks are especially hard to pluck because of the number of pin feathers. Once the larger feathers are removed, the duck is basically covered with down. Those are the pin feathers you have to get rid of. They are endless. The story my Mama told me involved a lot of these elements.

The first thing you need to realize when reading this is that my Grandmama didn't cuss. She wasn't a goody-two-shoes, but cussing was just not in her repertoire. I never heard her cuss and none of the relatives I grew up with had either. That made it all the more remarkable when she did.

One summer, my Mama, her sister, and my Grandmama were on the back stoop of the house picking chickens. Of course they gossiped the entire time and it was not such an unpleasant task. They had finished picking the chickens, and were beginning to clean up the area.

My uncle appeared at this moment and dumped 6 ducks he had killed on the back stoop. The three women just looked at a pile of hours that had just been added to their day.

This is when my Grandmama uttered her immortal words. She looked at that pile of ducks for a looooong time. Then she said "I'll be shot with shit and killed for stinking." The other women were now in complete shock after hearing her speak.

So 'picking ducks' was a bad enough task that my Grandmama cussed about it. That's what Robertson meant. Marry the girls young before they realize what a nasty task it is. They'll be more pliable about doing it and a lot of other things. My Mama my Aunt, and my Grandmama didn't marry early. They knew what picking ducks meant and the men they married had to pull their own weight and reciprocate in some way or they were next in line to be picked.

Learn what 'ducks you might have to pick' before you marry anybody!