Ugly Duckling

Joe brought to my attention this morning that the term “mud duck” has emerged as a derisive name for Minnesotans. It’s trend enough to have made the pages of the Star Tribune, although to be fair, the Strib appears to have perched its considerable reporting credibility in this very important matter on the back of a newspaper produced by high school students in Maple, Wisconsin. Apparently, the word is used by Wisconsinites who live near the Minnesota-Wisconsin border, and who are in a position to interact involuntarily with a lot of Minnesotans.

It’s probably about time we had an aspersing nickname. We all know that modesty and graciousness are well-dressed stand-ins for misanthropy and insecurity; and if you want to see Minnesotans at their worst, truly losing their cool, spend a weekend trying to find a quiet campsite on the south shore, an organic sandwich in Bayfield, at the gas pump in Bismarck, or saying good-bye to their valedictorian down in Iowa City. If the truth be known, probably the worst “mud ducks” belong to the City and Regional Magazines Association. These kinds of magazines are forever urging their readerships to trample the greenswards of bucolic little villages in search of morel mushrooms, fall color, and antique trivets. They are designed to reach a certain local subspecies of the Ugly American.

“Mud duck,” of course, is a term that is potentially cute and nonthreatening, even if it’s a little dismissive. Thus, it’s a lot like “cheese head,” but a little less obvious. Which raises the disturbing possibility that the Wisconsin coiners of “mud duck” are more subtle than the Minnesota coiners of “cheese head.” But whoever was the first to create the mold for those cheddar-wedge styrofoam hats, he was most definitely not a native Minnesotan.

But let’s not forget the original mud duck, otherwise known as the spoonbill or the shoveller duck. James Audobon himself was very fond of the bird. He wrote:

“We have no Ducks in the United States whose plumage is more changeable than that of the male of this beautiful species…. The Shoveller walks prettily, and I have often admired its movements in the puddles formed by heavy dashes of rain in our southern corn-fields, where I have found it in company with the Wood Duck, the Mallard, and the Pin-tail. Its flight resembles that of the Blue-winged Teal; and in tenderness as well as in flavour, it rivals, as an article of food, that beautiful bird. No sportsman who is a judge will ever pass a Shoveller to shoot a Canvass-back. It is rarely however found on salt water, and that only when compelled to resort thither.”

That, I think, is a namesake we can all live with.