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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