JD was a star. Everyone wanted to be around him, see him, cuddle him, play with him. The students kept asking to come over and have some time with the little guy. It was fun to walk away quickly and have him chase you down, his big feet pitter-pattering on the floor behind you. But little did they know, he was a real troublemaker behind the scenes.

I’d come home in between classes sometimes, and there he was. Sitting in his little mesh bag, a small puff of yellow. As soon as he heard the door shut, he’d begin.

“Quack … quack … quack … Quack-Quack-Quack-Quack!” He would not stop until I finally came over to him and pulled him out of his duck prison.

The first week was enjoyable. I loved coming home and setting him on my desk while I studied. He would curiously totter around, getting himself into all kinds of trouble like chewing on inedible things. Yes, it was distracting, but I was too enamored by his cuteness to care.

When I had more time, I would fill up the bath and let him swim around in it. This is when you could tell he was in his element. His whole demeanor changed: his quacks turned into cheerful chirps as he skidded around, diving, shaking his feathers, and splashing. It was so precious, I began to think it was worth all the nuisance he caused, until I decided to step away to do my homework finally.

“Quack … quack … Quack-Quack-Quack-Quack!”

“Okay I’m coming!” My voice meant nothing to him. He had to see me.

We were only supposed to watch him for a week until they found him a home, but it was taking longer than we hoped, so a week turned into two.

After so many days of my studies being disrupted, I was starting to lose my infatuation with JD. He would also quack at night when he could not see us, so we put him in the laundry room, in which he quacked even louder. We thought he would have adjusted by that point. There was nothing we could do—we had to sleep, and eventually he calmed down and fell asleep too. By the end of it, no one was more annoyed with him than I was.

“Oh, he’s so adorable! I want him!” the girls would say, after they held him for a few short minutes.

Horror struck me. “Trust me—you wouldn’t if you had to live with him.”

I dreaded coming back to the dorm knowing I would have no repose. Yet I kept coming back. In between moments of getting frustrated with his incessant quacking, my heart would melt and I would feel sorry for him. I mean, who can blame a baby duck for crying out for freedom? He did not know he was annoying. He was just a duck out of water, needing to be out in his element. And we were given the task of taking care of him—which included aquatic entertainment in our bathtub while playing the (literally) sitting mother hen.

Obviously, it’s a duck. I needed to do my homework. I had every right to be annoyed at a duck living in my house quacking for attention, but it made me think about where I fell on the patience-o-meter, in general. I started to ask myself: How good is my patience? I started to become more attentive to this character trait and began noticing all sorts of ways I could improve it.

Taking care of JD also reminded me of how working with children requires a maximum amount of patience. They can be just like little ducks, running under your legs, constantly making you wonder if today will be the day they’ll get stepped on, constantly asking for things, and demanding your attention. I realized that JD had tested me to my limits, and honestly if he were human, I would probably have had more patience, but he showed me how easy it can be to become selfish even when you don’t have important needs to attend to. It is so easy to forget about the other person’s feelings when yours fill up your mind and that is all you can focus on.

Do you roll your eyes when someone tells you the same story you’ve heard a million times? Do you get annoyed at other people’s personalities for being different than yours? Do you lose your temper when someone does not understand something, and it’s the second time you are explaining it to them? Or when someone asks you for a favor that only you could fulfill but it’s a major inconvenience for you?

1 Corinthians 13:4 tells us that love is patient. There are also verses about treating animals kindly, like Proverbs 12:10. God gave us dominion over animals for a reason: they help us develop our character, especially the quality of patience. If you’re not already an animal lover, maybe you could grow in your appreciation for them a little more.

Once JD moved out, the house was at peace again, but I honestly missed her now that she was gone (we then found out JD was a she-duckling, to our surprise). Nothing would beat the sight of her paddling around in our tub, full of joy. Jimmy-Dean might have been a little nutty, but I’m grateful we had her for the time we did because she taught me how to have more patience.