But first come with me to Lake Alexandrina in the heart of the South Island, as fine a trout fishing lake as exists in this world or the next.
On Alexandrina there lives a population of Australasian crested grebe. They are spectacular birds known for their mating rituals and for the way they carry their chicks on their back when swimming.
For it so happened recently that a passer-by on Lake Alexandrina observed a nest of little grebelets and a duck nosing around it. The parent grebe could see the duck as well but was unconcerned because ducks are no threat to grebe chicks.
Hawks are a threat, large trout may be, but ducks are not.
Yet then, to the passer-by’s amazement, the duck stretched up, seized a chick by the head and swallowed it whole. Unsure that he’d seen what he thought he’d seen, the passer-by reached for his cellphone and waited.
Within minutes up swam another duck and down its throat went another chick, this time recorded on camera. The photograph went to the Department of Conservation and from there to the world.
The common duck, the waddling, quacking, comical bird that abounds in our urban parks and accepts our bread, was a cold-blooded killer.
The department sprang into action. It staked out the grebe nests on Lake Alexandrina and discovered though patient observation that the chick-eating ducks numbered precisely three.
Fearing that the chick-eating habit would spread by contagion and bring about the end of the grebe on Alexandrina, and perhaps, since ducks fly, throughout the country, Doc rounded up the three offending ducks and then ... well, guess what happened?
According to my local paper the ducks were euthanised. Or should that be euthanased? Or euthanated?
Or perhaps something else entirely, such as killed.
When I was young we heard little of euthanasia. Dogs and cats back then were put down or to sleep. Horses were shot.
But the word euthanasia actually goes a long way back. It derives from the Greek eu meaning good or well and thanatos meaning death.
So euthanasia meant dying a good death, which in former times was defined as a pious death at peace with one’s god. It had nothing to do with being painless, indeed by far the best-known and most commonly illustrated example of euthanasia was the crucifixion of Christ.
It was only with the advent of morphine in the 19th century that it became possible to relieve the pain of the dying.
One step on from that was the idea of ending a life in order to put an end to suffering. As a result, today we use euthanasia to mean two different things: one is to kill without pain; the other is to kill mercifully to spare future pain.
And I would argue that the second meaning is the better use of the word.
Voluntary euthanasia of human beings is legal in this country, under strict conditions. The patient has to be of sound mind, and suffering from a condition that will kill them within six months.
I have known two people who have met those criteria and taken advantage of the law. They avoided months of drawn-out misery and they left this life on their own terms.
They died good deaths, in other words, at peace with their personal gods, and in keeping with the Greek roots of the word.
What happened to the ducks was something different.
I have no doubt they died without pain, for however fiercely Doc may defend our native birds I cannot imagine their officers taking it out on the ducks by way of revenge for the grebe chicks.
But the ducks didn’t die to avoid future suffering. Nor were they at peace with the idea.
They were perfectly well and keen to carry on being ducks.
So it isn’t right to say the ducks were euthanised (or euthanased, or euthanated). They were killed. For good reason perhaps, and humanely, but still killed.
And we should say so.
• Joe Bennett is a Lyttelton writer.
