"Thank God he's alive!"

Our old friend Bosley the (former) Mystery Duck is alive and well! He disappeared over the worst of the winter, along with most of the mallards. Now he's back, fat and happy. His markings are so strange and ornate that we keep thinking there are more like him, but we've never been able to pin it down.

I was so curious about this duck that I sent a gif of him to the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and asked if they would try to identify it. I was amazed to get a prompt reply. They believe he is a hybrid of a domestic fowl called a magpie duck, raised for meat, and one of the more promiscuous mallards in Como Lake.

His featherings are exotic, and because of that, and his sheer size, he sticks out like a sore duck thumb, but we love him. It's his loyalty, I think. He and the mallard flock are closely bonded. No doubt one of his parents fled the barnyard when he/she realized what was coming next. "Duck dinner," as Wimpy used to say. "You bring the duck."

Mystery of the Magpie Duck: still unsolved?

After the revelations in yesterday's email from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, we went to visit our newly-recognized magpie duck in Como Lake. There he was, fat and feathered and practically eating out of a man's hand as he threw seeds to the flock, which was waddling around on the lake shore.

But then I noticed something.

I noticed something I had sort-of noticed before. Our duck's plumage didn't exactly match the photos of magpie ducks, though they had the same general configuration of light and dark.

But our duck is brown.

Our duck has a brown breast and sides which pretty closely match the rich variegated plumage on the mallards (particularly the females) all around him. Magpie ducks are closer to solid black and white.

Then I realized I probably didn't fully understand what the Cornell Laboratory guy said: "It is a hybrid  of mallard origin" likely referred to OUR duck alone, not the whole species as I had assumed. I guess I thought his entire race had a mallard origin, like Thoroughbreds being spawned from ancient Arabians, or Bengal cats from wildcats, but probably not. Our guy is unique.

Though we can't know for sure because he likely won't submit to a DNA test, this is likely a mixed-race duck, a genetic puzzle, which is partly what makes him so special. That means either his Mummy or his Daddy was a magpie duck which mated with a mallard: a strange love affair, which might even have rendered him sterile, like the mule which results from a donkey mating with a horse.

Or not?

And why is he so big? He's nearly the size of a goose, for God's sake! It's hard to believe he was crossed with anything, let alone a duck so relatively small. We noticed his feet were at least an inch longer, as was his bill. But I tend to trust what the Cornell Lab guys say.

Today, when I was particularly eager to get a good look at him, he practically posed for me, his whole body out of the water, even turning to let me get a look at the other side.

Though the mystery has been solved, it hasn't been solved fully. The scenario is now more complicated: a magpie duck and a mallard producing offspring which has features of each, but is mostly magpie in size and configuration.  And what of "the other one", the second magpie duck which we thought we saw once? Did that mating produce more than one offspring which decided to stay in the safety of the lake rather than become someone's dinner? Or is this Bigfoot all over again, seeing what you want to see?

I wonder, too, why he posed for us on dry land like that. We've been glimpsing that duck for several years, in an "oh, look, there he is!" "Where?" "Oh, he's gone now" sense. Never has he stood there three feet away from us, preening and quacking into the camera.

The magpie is a most illustrious bird

Dwells in a diamond tree

One brings sorrow and one brings joy

Sorrow and joy for me

The magpie is a most royal bird

Black and blue as night

I would that I had feathers three

Black and blue and white

I saw the gentle magpie bird

In dusky yester-eve

One brought sorrow and one brought joy

And sooner than soon did leave

The magpie is a most illustrious bird

Dwells in a diamond tree

One brings sorrow and one brings joy

Sorrow and joy for me

Sorrow and joy for me

Sorrow and joy for me

SOLVED: the Mystery of the Como Lake Duck!

I've written about this guy before. He's an inhabitant of Como Lake in Coquitlam, B. C., a place we walk around a few times a week.

The lake is filled with mallards, various diving birds (even loons), and, sometimes, great congregations of Canada geese, but this particular duck is totally unique. To be honest, he doesn't even look like a wild duck. I've tried to find out more about him, but since I didn't have a name, only a description, I kept running up against a blank wall.

Over the several years we've seen him, I became more and more curious about this strange rogue duck, and then downright perplexed. Eventually, every time we spotted him I began to go nuts. Something was going on here! He was so big that he seemed like a domestic duck that had gone native. He was piebald in his markings, like a cowboy's pinto horse, and had that long, thick, curvy Donald Duck bill that you see in the barnyard.

A couple of years ago I found a magnificent site for the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. This is one of the best sites I've ever seen for sheer volume of content combined with ease of use. If you want to find anything bird, it's here.  It's truly user-friendly, with lots of descriptions and thumbnails of species so you can put name to bird, not to mention recorded calls and songs for every type of bird. This site helped me figure out what those eerie "whoo-whoot-whoo-WHOOOOO!" sounds were that I was hearing on summer nights (barred owl). The call is described on the web site as "who cooks for you?", which delighted me. The "youuuuuu" sounds exactly like a descending trill on a bassoon.

Finally it occurred to me that if anyone in the world could identify my mystery duck, it would be the Cornell Laboratory. I emailed them, attempting to attach a link to the video of it  (which may or may not have worked) and describing it as well as I could.

Some time went by, but not much. Then today I got this email, which delighted me no end!

Hi Margaret,

It is definitely a domestic-type — closest I can find is something called a Magpie Duck. It is a hybrid of Mallard origin.

http://www.zooenc.eu/en/magpie-duck/

Best,
Marc

Marc Devokaitis
Public Information Specialist

Now that I had something to google, everything matched up and I realized that it had to be a magpie duck. Apparently, these birds make good eating and are cultivated for their meat, a fact that had better not get around Como Lake. It's surrounded by avid fisher-persons who might just be up for a duck dinner. This guy is so friendly and hangs around the shore so much that he'd be an easy catch.

(Not our duck. Presented for comparison only.)

A couple of times we thought we saw a smaller duck of this type. A female? It's possible, though we didn't pay enough attention. I'm not sure why it's called a magpie, but that's his name, and he apparently has mallard blood, perhaps the way I have Spanish blood from the Spanish Armada. (Not. We were all dirt-poor Irish.) Some of the photos I've found show ducks with iridescent mallard-like patches on their heads. 

Well I'll be damned!

Meantime, though this song isn't really about my duck, it's very lovely and I want to include it here.

And one more barred owl video.

POST-SCRIPT: Since writing this admittedly-sparse piece, I've had some thoughts. Thoughts of the ugly duckling, of changelings, of barnyard ducks escaping certain death and flapping away from the hatchet. Of strange-looking magpie ducks who barely escaped being dinner.

This is why I like this duck so much, and why it drove me so crazy before I knew what it was. Though it plainly didn't fit in its environment and looked sort of like a turkey among doves (albeit a nice-looking, handsome turkey), it seemed so comfortable, so glad to be where it was. Its fellow ducks, mostly mallards, didn't seem to notice that it was different, but then - they're used to honkin' hundreds of Canada geese, not always the most hospitable creatures, suddenly descending on the lake and taking it over, doing weird things like swimming in big circles. One friendly-looking duck, one big farmyard-looking duck was not going to be a problem, and they all dunk and dabble the same way, ducktails up. Plenty of gunk and ill-advised tourist-food to go around.

But at the same time. . . I'm depressed today, not quite psych-ward depressed but down, and I wonder if it's because the air has been let out of a longstanding mystery. This weird, doesn't-fit-at-all duck suddenly has a sort of identity. He at least makes sense now. And I don't know whether I like that. I don't know whether I'll be so prone to saying, "Oh, look, there he is!" when he glides or waddles into view. Or maybe I will, but it won't be the same.

It's as if he's been operating under an alias, or has been The Duck That Has No Name, and is now "named", or at least species-ed as a magpie duck. Odd name, that - one would think it would be harlequin or something, with those mixed markings. The only association I have with magpies is Heckle and Jeckle.

I've done a bit of digging into the breed, not a lot mind you because that would bore me, and I can't find reference to it being any kind of hybrid. The YouTube videos I've found feature pet magpie ducks, not obviously being fattened up for the kill.

The magpie duck is maybe 50% larger than the mallards, heavier-bodied, with that cobby build and waddly proportion that aren't common in wild birds. Yes, the mallards have large breasts, but they're mainly floats, a way to keep themselves upright in the water and protected from cold. This guy is just solid, man, carved out of alabaster, or plain wood like a decoy bobbing around in the water. There probably would be some pretty good eating there, with some orange sauce on the side.

Ducks, swans, all that stuff, it's the material of fairy tales and legend. I have a mystical attachment to birds, which is why I went into such deep mourning at the very premature death of my beloved Paco. I hardly had any time with her at all before we found her dead in her cage, for no reason anyone ever understood.

The fact my back yard birds have fled is a mystery, and also pains me. Last year the yard was teeming with species, including loud, arrogant, impossibly gorgeous Steller's jays who would swoop in and empty out the feeder. We also saw juncos, chickadees, wrens, thrushes, towhees, sparrows, and - every once in a while - the magnificent visitation of a flicker burning bright.

Now, they've all gone. Where? and why? Is it because we have a cat now? Because we never expected to have a cat. Bentley is a hunting voyeur only, and is not allowed to go outside and become catmeat. But he does spend considerable time peering out the back window.

And yet, last summer, the first summer we had him, the birds still teemed.

When I go to Piper Spit on Burnaby Lake, blackbirds literally flutter down out of the sky and eat out of my hand. I feel like freaking St. Francis of Assisi. They turn their heads this way and that, their eyes like obsidian beads, their feet freaky black leather twigs. What are they thinking?

Birds do seem to think with a single mind, like the Borg. They exist as collectives. Like humans, they're flock animals, only far more clever than we are. Certainly, they are better survivors. When it all collapses, when the day of reckoning comes, will some of the birds make it? Hitchcock portrayed them as freakish and merciless, and yes, there is that aspect to them. The fat pigeon that took over my hand at Piper Spit weighed about twenty pounds, and I realized as I looked at it that, close up, it was as hideous as the dinosaur from which it evolved.

POST-POST. I felt bad about this, about mentioning Bentley as one of the reasons the birds fled from the back yard. Because it might not be that, at all. We've noticed how dramatically bird populations wax and wane, even week-to-week. Those first couple of visits to Piper Spit were so bird-heavy that I assumed it was always like that, a teeming bird paradise. Then, one week we went and there were only sullen-looking heaps of geese (geese not being my favorites - they have a habit of hissing at you, before they lower their heads and charge). No more magnificent sandhill cranes or iridescent swallows or gorgeously-plumed wood ducks or or or - . But next time we went, about 2/3 of them were back. I don't know what drives them, I don't.

But it's not Bentley! Bentley is like a second child born after tragedy, especially beloved. He is just the best cat ever.

UPDATE from 2021! This post has so many post-posts that I hesitated to add this addition. But since I just got a comment from someone about the Mystery Duck, I thought I'd post a link to a collection of YouTube videos I shot over the past five years of the ducks we came to call Bosley and Belinda. Haven't seen Bosley in several months however, and we are getting worried. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv59M8aSlCSb4R7FRY7jsB__G0fj4Odt4  

Mystery duck

The duck mystery deepens. For years now, Bill and I have been walking around Como Lake in Coquitlam - a very pleasant alternative to the "duck park" that has been bulldozed to make way for a Third Reich-scale cement amphitheatre that will blast loud rock music night and day. Obviously, all the wildlife within a 5-mile radius has fled. 

But we still have Como Lake! We noticed some time ago that there are some pretty strange ducks amongst the mallards and wood ducks. This one, for example. This is a very big duck, almost the size of a goose, and he is brown-and-white  (several different shades of brown, from quite dark, almost coffee bean, to cocoa brown). Then we discovered, to our delight, a second brown-and-white duck, somewhat smaller than this one, likely a female. And yet, strangely enough, we've never seen them together.

I made this gif from an eight-second-long YouTube video labelled "Ducks at Como Lake". I know it's the same duck. Not my video, of course. There was no information with it, not even a description. This is not much help.

Do you think I can find ANYTHING on this duck, or on any duck remotely close to it? If I google "brown-and-white duck", I get professional photos that are labelled "brown-and-white duck". They appear to be of barnyard animals, but I can't be sure because there is no information with them at all.

NOBODY knows anything about these two ducks (or are there more? Or will there be babies?), which both intrigues me and drives me crazy. It's possible these are domestic ducks that have gone native, or whatever-it-is they do when they answer the call of the wild. Or maybe they're hybrids - it's just crazy enough. 

There were beavers living in LaFarge Lake (in the famous "duck park" which has now been paved, like Paradise in the Joni Mitchell song), and no one could explain that either. Nine beavers, to be exact, two adults and seven kits. Seems like some fever dream, except that there were nineteen trees felled or seriously gnawed in the park - we've seen some of them - and many still have wire mesh wrapped around the trunks. Beavers in a lake is no big deal, right? How about beavers living in a STONE QUARRY in the middle of a major city, in the residential area right next to a community college?

To make it even stranger, we saw an otter in the lake one day which scared the bejeezus out of the ducks. We've never seen them do this before, but they all, to a duck, beat it out of the water and just huddled in a line along the shore until the otter was well away from them. It swam around on its back like they all do. No way can there be ONE otter in a lake. Or a stone quarry.

Today we went to a place in Burnaby called Piper Spit and saw ducks and ducks and ducks: a mother duck with THIRTEEN babies, so newly-hatched their fluff was wet even when they were sitting on the ground. And we saw a pair of Canada geese with goslings so new they still had that pollen-y-looking yellow stuff on them, almost like vernix on a newborn.

One of the geese kept kinking its neck and bobbing its head at us. We knew why, of course. We were too close to its young. So I said to Bill: Do you know how you can tell it's a Canada goose?

Because it stands on guard? (Moan. It's too late at night.)

Special bonus news item from the Tri-City News!!

They may be one of Canada’s most iconic animals, but the beaver is not welcome in a popular park in Coquitlam.

City officials are once again dealing with the large rodents at Lafarge Lake after the animals appeared in late fall.

While the city isn’t sure how many beavers are in the park, Lanny Englund, the city’s urban forestry and parks services manager, noted a process is underway to have them removed and relocated.

The problem with the beavers is they damage trees and dig tunnels, which can undermine the trails around the lake and cause a hazard.

“It does seem to happen on and off and eventually it gets to the point where the impact is too great,” Englund told the Tri-Cities NOW, noting the city experienced a similar situation with beavers a couple of years ago.

“Town Centre Park is such a high use [park],” he said.

“There’s too much risk allowing them to do their thing.”

In the short term, the city has wrapped trees close to the lake in a fencing wire to protect them from the animals.

The city has also brought in a contractor to live-trap the beavers and relocate them to another part of the province.

It’s unclear how long it will take to trap and remove the animals from the lake.

Meanwhile, the big mystery is exactly how the beavers made the lake their home in the first place.

Englund noted the lake is connected to Hoy Creek and the Coquitlam River by underground pipes, but suggested it would difficult for the beavers to travel through them.

There is also a small creek in the northwest corner of Town Centre Park that has been home to beavers, but it would force the animals to cross over land.

Englund said an even more unlikely scenario is that someone intentionally put the beavers in the lake.
     

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Fifty shades of black (a story of bondage)

 

 

She knew this was the last chance she was going to get to visit her favourite spot. Already leaves were curling under her feet, evening brought on a hint of frost, and she had put on the usual five or six pounds around her hips, a layer of bear-fat for the coming winter.

 

This special place of hers was called Burnish Lake, and she always liked the double-entendre in the name: the coppery surface of the water in the evening, the antique gold of early-fall leaves. Burnish Lake had lots of things going for it, but most of all it had ducks. Swarms of them, and due to the mild climate in these temperate parts they didn’t seem to migrate in the fall. No need. Being social animals, they congregated in swarms around the strange geometric wooden dock that jutted out into the shallow water where they all dabbled and splashed.

 

It was really just a big pond, and this dock – it was more of a boardwalk, really – went on forever. Besides the ducks, all there was to see around here were water lilies. She could imagine how the frogs must sound after dark.
 

 

The child in her came out when she saw those ducks, and she wished she had bread with her, knowing full well that feeding ducks made about as much sense as feeding bears (which she had done once. Cheesies, which the big guy had really relished, until he grabbed the plastic bag out of her hands and ate the whole thing.) Then they would truly swarm, revealing the rather nasty side of ducks and of birds in general, just dinosaurs reborn with all their primitive saurian instincts intact.

 

They were mostly female mallards, she guessed, with a few half-grown babies – juveniles – but no drakes. She looked and looked for the gorgeous iridescent green heads, but did not see one. What, no sultans to keep the harem in order? Guess not. She threw a few stones at them, meanly, watching them “waaak” and scatter.

 

She had her reasons to be mean, and her reasons for wanting to come out here alone and get some fresh air. She hadn’t had fresh air in a while. It hadn’t been her idea to go to the hospital, and in fact most of the time she felt just fine. Better than fine! She was exhilarated, and people were telling her things like, “You look ten years younger. What have you been doing?”

Yes. She felt special, more special than she had ever felt before. She wasn’t really going to act on those feelings, was she? But Burt thought she might.

 

When you’re in a certain state, you don’t know what effect you’re having on others. You’re oblivious. So even though she stepped on every sentence to the point that no one was willing to talk to her, even though she slept barely two hours a night, even though she had lost fifteen pounds (good!), even though she was one step away from sending out the mass email that would change everything (or was it Facebook?) – she didn’t think they needed to take that kind of drastic measure.
 

 

Something wonderful has happened, the email would begin, and I wanted to share it with all my closest and dearest friends. I have received some information recently that is very special, and very exciting. I have suspected this about myself for a very long time, but now it has been confirmed by a Higher Source.  I have been granted the ability to 

 

That was as far as she got. So what the hell was wrong with that? Or of thinking she saw Moses one day in the liquor store? If you think he’s Moses, he IS Moses, her writer friend said to her the other day. She wanted to see Moses again, to talk to him, to ask him just how he got that water out of the rock.

 

Burt kept saying she wouldn’t let him talk, that he couldn’t even get a word in, and that was ridiculous. Burt kept saying she was being abusive, that she was acting like a bitch, but didn’t she have it coming with all the rotten things that had happened to her as a child? Probably. But it bothered Burt to be called a cocksucking fuck-face in front of people.

 

So it was the hospital for a while, again, and medication, again, and more psychiatrists to beguile. She had been seducing psychiatrists (verbally, of course) since the age of fifteen, so she was awfully good at it by now. Most of their patients were so dull, she supposed, that her clever banter and sparkling irony must have been downright stimulating, if in a rather embarrassing way.

 

She hated to leave those ducks, but she had to go to the bathroom. She noticed there was nobody else around, just nobody, and thought it was odd.  Then she remembered the dates on the sign.  She was the very last visitor to Burnish Lake before the season ended. But what about the staff? Nobody around, but it didn’t matter, she didn’t like people anyway and was finished with them. They were all so full of shit.

 

She hated the bathroom here, so primitive, almost a privy. It was just a big plywood box with hardly any light, only a useless burnt-out bulb, and no windows. Just a slot for ventilation, up too high to be of any use. She used the smelly toilet, noticed there was no sink but only hand-sanitizer. Disgusted, she squirted some on her hands and rubbed it in.

 

Was that why the sliding bolt lock wouldn’t move, because her hands were so slippery?

 

Then she remembered there was a much larger sliding bolt on the outside of the door, for when they locked everything up for the winter. To keep out homeless people or whatever. But this was the inside lock, stuck. She wiggled it gently, then a little harder, then wiggled it some more.

 

Panic began to rise in her. Her worst fear, worse than falling or being raped or even of dying, was of being trapped, locked inside an unfamiliar building or unable to get out of some suffocating place. The worst feeling she had in the hospital was the sound of a big heavy institutional door clanging shut behind her. It seemed to happen every time.
 

 

She wiggled some more. Banged. Then shouted. Then shouted some more. But then she remembered that no one was there.


She screamed and screamed. Her throat began to grow raw. And it was getting dark out. The little ventilation slot was greying now, and the whole stinking room was turning into a black box.

 

She would die in here, alone, in a shithouse in the woods. They’d look for a body for a while, then give up. What would they find in the spring? Then she realized that by throwing herself so violently against the door, she had probably bent the bolt so badly that the lock was irrevocably jammed. Only a hammer or screwdriver would get her out of here, and even if there were somebody around, how would they get it to her?
 

 

It got dark so fast. She was tired. There was no air in this place. Panic turned to despair. She was like one of those stupid hikers who goes on a dangerous trail and doesn’t tell anyone. Who knew about Burnish Lake, anyway? Not Burt. He had never even heard of it.

 

It had nothing to do with the poetic word “burnish” anyway, but was the name of some hopelessly dull cocksucker of a statesman who’d been dead 100 years. Nobody gave a fuck about him anyway.

 

She had to fall asleep eventually: her quota was four hours at least, and she didn’t want to set herself back to her Healing the World campaign, in which people from all over the globe would come to her so she could lay her hands on them.

 

 

Bullshit thought, probably, but maybe not. She still didn’t see what was so wrong with it. Lots of those East Indian women all wrapped up in white gauze had people just flocking to them, and nobody said they were crazy. She had stopped a few people on the street and started to explain it to them, and they had pulled away, but weren’t most people full of it anyway? The average IQ is 100, her writer friend said to her, and they both laughed.

 

She had to sleep. She curled up on the dank floor, and all the meds she was on eventually pulled her under.
 

 

At the very bottom of the murky tank of her sleep, footsteps crunched on the grass outside, leaving deep imprints. Someone was humming to himself. He was a little bit happy, mind, but a little bit sad, too. This was always the final thing he did, the very last ritual before closing up for the year.

 

There was a fiddly noise, a wiggling. A little bit stuck, it was. He’d fix that. He gave it the special wiggle it needed to move. He had a way with this lock.

 

There was a thin screech of metal on metal, then the sure-handed slide and thunk of a bolt as it dropped into place. Satisfied, the man turned his head and looked around the place one last time, then headed over to his pickup.

Stupid duck names: fifty shades of quacks

What is the correct term for a group of ducks?

(from Ducks Unlimited): There are several different terms used to refer to a group of ducks. Mostly, it depends on what species of ducks are in the group. Paddling, skiff, raft, team and dopping are just some of the terms used.

Over the centuries, people have come up with interesting names for flocks of different types of birds. A flock of geese, for instance, is called a "skein" when in flight and a "gaggle" when on the ground. Similarly, a group of mallards is referred to as a "sord" when in flight and a "brace" when on the water. Here are some other interesting group names for birds:

• A "murder" of crows
• A "parliament" of owls
• A "tiding" or "charm" of magpies
• An "exaltation" of larks
• An "unkindness" of ravens

(and also):

A suffocation of accountants

An awfulness of agents

An evisceration of editors

A bore of  blabbermouths

A tedium of celebrities

A backstab of gossips

An irrelevance of Kardashians

A Camelot of Kennedys

A a a a a. . . . . .

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.com/2012/01/synopsis-glass-character-novel-by.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Fifty Shades of Irony

There Once was an Ugly Duckling

There once was an ugly duckling, with feathers all stubby and brown.

When he was very young, something happened to his Mom and Dad. Perhaps someone had adopted them and put them in a duck pond somewhere. He only knew that he hadn’t seen them in a very long time, so he had no one to protect him. He was all on his own.

All the other ducklings, who were fuzzy and yellow and didn’t look like him at all, made fun of him and gave him a hard time.

  

They pecked at him. They quacked at him. They made fun of the fact that he didn’t have a Mom and Dad. They thought his short brown feathers looked stupid and named him Stubby. They wouldn’t let him dabble in the slime in his favourite slime-pond.

One duckling in particular didn’t like him. His name was Wakwak and he quacked at him in a very mean way. “Wakwak,” he said, “we’re better than you, wakwak.”

When the ugly duckling asked why, Wakwak just said, “Because we’re fuzzy and yellow. And you’re not.”

That didn’t make much sense to Stubby, because he knew it didn’t matter what you looked like on the outside. But the other ducks disagreed with him and picked on him all the time.

Still, he was lucky because he did have one very good friend. It was another duckling who looked even uglier than he did, all lumpy and grey like mildew. “Let’s stick together,” Tuffy said to him.

He was called Tuffy because he was so tough. When the yellow ducklings quacked at him, he honked right back at them and sometimes scared them away.

Tuffy said to his friend, “You need someone to protect you.” So Tuffy

began to scare the yellow ducklings away when they were mean. Stubby managed to avoid the darting blows of the tiny little orange bills for a while.

They had such wonderful times together in the duck pond! Stubby was so glad that he had finally found a friend.

But then one day Tuffy said:

“You know, Stubs, I’ve been asked to go swim with those guys over there.”

"You mean those yellow ducklings? After what they did to us?”

 
“Ah, they’re not so bad. They want me to protect them from those mean geese over there.”

Stubby wondered how the geese could be any meaner than the yellow ducklings.

“When will you be back?”

“Oh, maybe next year when we’re all grown up. But don’t worry, the time will fly by.”

But the time didn’t fly by, and Stubby got very discouraged and lonely

and one day decided to leave this unfriendly flock and go somewhere
where he could at last find some peace.

He walked for seventeen miles on a dirt road until he realized he could

swim a lot faster to where he wanted to go (as far away as possible!), so he found a nearby lake and swam and swam and swam and swam and swam.

He finally found a quiet cove where he could be alone and peaceful. But then he heard something. A croak. A really loud croak. It sounded like a frog. The biggest frog in the world!

Soon he found the lake was anything but peaceful: there were bullfrogs everywhere!

There were so many bullfrogs croaking that he felt like he was in a field of cows!

“I am the Bullfrog King, ribbit ribbit”, said a big fat bullfrog.

“Ah shaddap. I’m the Bullfrog Queen and I’m a lot bigger and smarter

than you.”

The two bullfrogs began to arm-wrestle each other with their slimy green arms and try to poke at each other’s bulging bullfrog eyes. Stubby was  shocked! He had never seen anything so mean in his life. This was worse than being pecked at by those little yellow beaks.

“Stop!” Stubby cried to the two wrestling frogs. Don’t you know it’s wrong to hurt another person?” he cried.

“We’re not people. We’re frogs. Who are you anyways?”

“I’m Stubby, the Ugly Duckling, with feathers all stubby and brown.”

“Well, I’m the Frog King and I’m all slimy and green. RIBBIT!” He and the girl frog went right on fighting and throwing clumps of slime at each other.

Stubby was failing in his role as a peacekeeper. It was very discouraging. Even the dragonflies were hissing at each other. Was anybody really getting along in this lake? Why was everyone so mean to each other?

 The days grew shorter and colder. Soon Stubby realized his wings were still too small for him to fly, so he couldn’t join all the grownup ducks as they migrated south to keep warm for the winter.  He could hear them quacking above him as they flew in a v-formation across the sky.

“I wonder if my Mom and Dad are in that flock,” he sighed. Then suddenly he realized something. The first few flakes of snow were beginning to fall and settle on his stubby brown feathers. He had to find some way to keep warm – and soon!   So he had some quick thinking to do. “If I can’t migrate,” he said, “maybe I can hibernate instead.”

“Hibernate” means you sleep all winter, so you have to do it in a warm

place. He began to dig a hole in the ground with his bill, but the ground was full of icky worms.

He began to look for a cave, and found a nice warm cozy one, but all of a sudden a giant grizzly bear roared at him, and he waddled quickly away going wakwakwakwakwakwakwakwakwakwakwakwaaaaaaaaaaak!

Finally he found a hollow log and nestled down in it for the winter, hoping he would be warm enough and stay asleep so he wouldn’t be hungry.

But it wasn’t very warm in the hollow log. In fact it wasn’t warm at all.

Soon he began to shiver. How could he ever get through the winter in a freezing cold place like this?

But then: he heard something.

A familiar sort of honking noise.

He couldn’t believe it! It was Tuffy!

“Tuffy! What are YOU doing here?”

“Those other ducklings weren’t so friendly. You were right. They just wanted to make fun of me ‘cause I’m grey and lumpy. Hey, you’re taking my log.”

“No, Tuffy. Nobody’s going to bully me this time. I’m staying. Besides, we can snuggle up together and keep each other warm.”

“Aw, all right, move over. And don’t take the best spot.”

As the weather grew colder and colder, the two ducklings spent more and more time sleeping. Soon they were in a deep sleep and were so still, they looked like two statues.

But then the first rays of spring began to penetrate the holes in the top of the hollow log. Stubby blinked his shiny little eyes and nudged Tuffy with his wing.

 “Get up, it’s spring,” he said.

“Oh man, I feel like I slept for three months!”

“You did.”

But then Tuffy noticed something, and Stubby noticed something. Over the winter, they had changed. They had grown up, and now they looked completely different.

Stubby looked magnificent, with a shiny green head, a copper-colored

chest, soft silver feathers on his tummy, and a white ring around his
neck.   He had grown into a beautiful mallard drake. He tried out his
quack a few times and was very happy with it.

  

But Tuffy. . . well, he wasn’t so lucky. He looked sort of weird: stringy grey feathers were poking through the moldy-looking grey fuzz on his back. His neck was very long and bent. His beak looked funny too, very long, and bluish-black.

“Tuff, I don’t know how to tell you this, but. . .”

Tuffy ran to the lake and jumped in. He bent his long neck and looked at his reflection.

“Ay, ay, ay, ay,” he said. “What a mess!”

“Oh, it’s not so bad, Tuff. Maybe you’re becoming a stork or something.”

“This is the limit. Sorry friend, I’m running away before the duck police catch up with me.”

Tuffy waddled away very quickly, hiding his head under his wing, and

Stubby realized he was alone again.

In fact, he had never been this lonely before or felt so sad. He realized
that being handsome didn’t mean his problems were over.

  

But just when he thought he’d be alone for the rest of his life, he heard something from far away.

A sort of wakwak sound.

He looked over towards the far side of the lake and saw a whole flock of ducks  swimming toward him. He remembered how mean those ducklings had been and wondered whether he should try to stand up to them, or just run away.

But then he noticed something: these ducks looked just like him! They

had shiny green heads and rings around their necks and nice fat squatty bodies. They wack-wacked in a friendly manner.

Taking a deep breath, he jumped into the lake.

Just then a very pretty girl duck with ruffly golden-brown feathers swam up to him. “Hey! Aren’t you that duck they used to call Stubby?”

“Oh. Um. No. Well, yes. But that was a long time ago.”

“I used to see those other ducklings giving you a hard time, but my Mom didn’t want me to swim away from our flock to defend you.”

“That’s OK, my friend Tuffy defended me. That is, until he ran away.”

“You know, Stubby, you’re a legend among the ducks. Everyone admires the way you refused to be nasty to those mean ducklings. They bullied you, but you wouldn’t bully them back.”

If a duck could blush, Stubby would have blushed at that moment.

“By the way,” he asked, “whatever happened to all those fuzzy yellow ducklings?”

“Look over there.”

He saw a flock of very ordinary-looking ducks dabbling around in the water. Really, they weren’t any better-looking than he had been, with his feathers all stubby and brown. He thought he saw Wakwak in the flock, but when he tried to catch his eye, he swam away.

“They were much cuter as fuzzy yellow ducklings.”  

“Too bad they didn’t stay that way,” his new friend said.

“But it doesn’t matter what you look like,” Stubby said.

The girl ducked looked at him. “No, you’re right. That’s not important.”

Stubby didn’t know how to act around girl ducks. He told himself that

she was a girl, and she was his friend, but she wasn’t his “girl friend”.
But he liked her so much that one day he decided that maybe she was, after all.

Ducks get married just like people do, and they stay together for always.

So the two ducks decided to spend the rest of their lives together, have a family of their own and be happy.

 And that might be the end of the story, except. . . wait a minute, what happened to Tuffy?

 What happened to that weird-looking duckling with all the ugly grey feathers and the geeky long neck? 

Well, one day he saw a flock of swans gliding around in the water. Swans!

Everyone knew they didn’t like outsiders. They were proud and thought they owned the lake.                  

In a panic Tuffy looked around for a place to hide. But by then he was

too big to hide in the marsh grass, and they saw him.

“Ay, ay, ay, ay,” he said. “The jig is up.”

 But then something truly amazing happened. One of them waved his giant white wing and said, “C’mon, brother, we need a big swan to swim at the end of the line.”

“Why are you asking me? I’m all grey and lumpy.  I’d ruin your colour scheme.”

The swan laughed (honk, honk, honk!). “Haven’t you looked in the mirror lately?”

Tuffy bent his head – it was easy to do, since he had such a long curvy neck – and saw that he had grown up to be a beautiful swan!

Now he saw why swans were so proud! He bent his bill to kiss his

reflection in the water. “I’m gorgeous!” he said.

He was very pleased with himself. But he was still a bit confused.

“How come somebody has to swim at the back of the flock?”

“We need a wingman. Swans get hunted, so we have to watch out all the time.  And people are always trying to capture us and put us

in parks and stuff. ”

“That doesn’t sound like much fun.”

“It isn’t. But we’re gorgeous, so we try to make the best of it.”

So Tuffy, whose new name was Sebastian Swan, swam over to the flock and took up his position in the rear. He was never captured and put in a park, but he found out that the life of a swan can be harder than he thought. Being beautiful doesn’t guarantee an easy life.

  

Meanwhile, Stubby (whose name was now Montgomery Mallard, Monty for short) settled down with Melinda Mallard, and they had a very large family of ducklings whose feathers were all stubby and brown. Once in a while he saw Tuffy (Sebastian Swan) gliding around in the lake with his family of cygnets (baby swans), who were lumpy and grey like Tuffy used to be.

But Monty Mallard told all his duckling children never to make fun of the cygnets. “They can’t help it if they’re swans,” he said. “Not everybody gets to be beautiful brown ducklings, like you.”

 




Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book



    It took me years to write, will you take a look
















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