The Ducklings Grow Fast

The downy little brown ducklings grew longer and taller. By 4 weeks old, they began to grow beautiful, shiny feathers. The three male chicks, Dooghie, Danny and Drake, grew metallic dark green feathers on their heads. A funny white ring around their necks separated the green neck feathers from the purplish-brown chest feathers. The four female ducklings were spotted white and buff-color, dull compared to their brothers’ shimmering plumage. Ava, Ella, Ana and Ariel, had stripes across their eyes as if they were wearing makeup. The chicks had grown so big, they were almost as tall as their mom. Even as big as they had all grown, they still chirped tiny little chirps, and their silly little wing sprouts still had no feathers.

Drake was becoming a big bully. He was the swiftest of all the ducklings to find worms and bugs which made him grow bigger faster. Now that he was the biggest of the clutch, he really knew how to throw his weight around! He pushed the other ducklings away from their worms and quarreled with them over who gets to eat it. Daily, Quackers had to break up fights between Drake and the four girls. Ariel was the most defiant against her bully brother. She didn’t like being pushed around by a bully, even if it was her brother. She liked Dooghie much better. Dooghie peacefully snuffled for worms with the flock without stealing everyone elses food.

Drake got bossier and bossier. In a few more weeks, the ducklings were almost as big as their mother. The feathers on their wings grew as if overnight, and their little chirps were breaking into moderate quacks. Drake even tried to boss his mom around. Boy! Did she give him a scolding!!! She was still bigger than her growing son, and she was going to make sure that he knew it! She nipped his heels and shoulder and quacked out a warning. Drake was put in his place, but not for long. Drake felt squeezed by the loveley garden. It had a lot of nice snails and cracked corn, but felt too small for an ambitious young duck. Drake had a feeling there was more to see in the world than some kindly humans, a big house and bug-infested garden. He dreamed to someday see the world. He kept his secret longings to himself.

Quackers Demonstrates Duck Decorum

Since Quackers was the first thing the ducklings saw when they chipped themselves out of their eggs, they were convinced that she was their mother. They had no other mother, and Quackers was a proud and dedicated mother to them. In single file, they followed their adopted mother across the grass, through a thicket of flowers and down a short terrace to the moist mulch field below. Quackers showed them how to sort through the mulch with their beaks for worms and bugs. She used her wide beak like a shovel. Sometimes her beak got piled high with dirt and mulch with mud smeared all over her face. Quackers lovingly demonstrated to her chicks how you could smell the bugs when you got close. She showed them how to gobble up and swallow the worms and pill bugs, and they followed her example. What fun it was to be snuffling around in a big crowd of kindred spirits scavenging for juicy morsels to eat!

The next day, two of the eight chicks in the clutch disappeared. Some children in the neighborhood found one of the chicks waddling alone down the alleyway behind the garden fence. Apparently, the chicks had found a hole under the back fence and had slipped out onto the urban alleyway where danger lurked in every nook and cranny. The children returned the one chick to the garden. Quackers had been searching frantically for her little son and was amazingly relieved to get him back under her wing. The other chick was never again found. The kind woman found the little hole under the fence and filled it up with heavy rocks.

Each night at dusk, Quackers returned to the wire cage to retire for the night. Her straw nest was cushioned with the soft, fluffy down that she plucked from below her own feathers in order to make a squashy, warm bed for her baby ducks. One by one, the ducklings would follow her into the comfortable nest within the wire cage and find a place to rest under Quackers’ strong wings. Quackers would stretch her legs lifting her large body up to accommodate spaces for her progeny. When the chicks were all settled into the nest, she would hunker down right onto their heads and fluff up her feathers to keep them warm. Each night, they slept securely huddled together after the kindly woman came to set the hook in the door latch to protect the ducks through another night.

Up until now, Quackers had been alone a long time with no one to talk to. Although the ducklings could only chirp teeny baby language, Quackers was overjoyed to have company and some other ducks to chat with. She felt very important that the chicks followed her every move, and completely obeyed her when she instructed them. Days and weeks passed as the ducklings learned all they needed to know from their mother, and they rapidly grew.

Quackers Teaches the Ducklings to Swim

The little boy had long ago outgrown his green turtle sand box. So the kindly woman removed all the sand and filled it with water for Quackers to take her daily bath. It was much easier for Quackers to hop into the turtle sandbox than the tall, claw-foot bathtub.

Quackers got up from her nest and led her noisy little chicks to the water to teach them to swim. As was her habit every day for many months, she leapt onto the side of the green plastic turtle and waddled into the cool, refreshing water. But her chicks could not leap like she did. They were too small. In a cacophony of panic-stricken chirping, they tried and tried, but could not leap high enough to get in the water.

The kindly woman heard the terrible sound of the frightened little chicks and came running, thinking that it might be another opossum. When she saw the desperate little chicks leaping and failing to scale the green plastic wall, she knew just what to do. The woman built two little ramps of stone and earth right up to the edge of the turtle. Then she placed each chick on one of the ramps so they could learn how to get up to the water's edge.

Very shortly, the clutch of chicks was happily swimming around like experts, even though it was their first time ever in the water. They followed behind the proudest mother of all, imitating her every move. Quackers swam to the left. And the chicks swam to the left. Quackers swam to the right. And the chicks swam to the right. Quackers briefly dunked her head and shoulders under the water, and they all dunked their little heads and shoulders under the water. Quackers churned the water with her majestic wing feathers. But the chicks had no wing feathers. So they spread open their tiny little, downy wing sprouts, and flapped them as hard as they could. No water churned. Having finished their baths, they all took a long drink. Then Quackers left the water and walked into the garden. One by one, the downy little chicks leapt from the water onto the green, plastic embankment and tumbled and stumbled over the side into the garden.

Quackers Hatches a Clutch of Ducklings

After the incident with the opossum, the kindly woman put a big cage in the garden with a swinging door. The door had a hook on it to lock it up. Inside it, she placed nice, clean straw, and used some boards to make a roof. The woman moved Quackers’ nest into the cage. Each night, the woman would lock Quackers into the cage. Each morning, the woman would open the door wide so that Quackers was free to roam. Quackers felt grateful for a safe place to sleep at night. She gladly rearranged her nest to her own satisfaction inside that cage, and continued sitting on her eggs.

One day, Quackers felt a strange movement under her belly. She rose up to take a peek. A tiny little beak tipped with an egg tooth had chipped its way through a crack in one egg. Quackers licked the tiny beak and sat back down again. She could feel the little infant chick slowly chipping its way out of the egg. It was an exhausting task for the chick. After a while, the other eggs began to crack. By mid afternoon, eight baby duck chicks had freed themselves from their eggs.

At first the babies were smoky black and all wet. Quackers removed the broken egg shards from her nest and licked each baby clean as best she could. Before long, Quackers was sitting on a nest full of fuzzy charcoal gray chicks chirping up a racket. How proud she was of her adorable family. She didn’t care that her Pekin feathers were pure white and her chicks were a different color. They were hers! Her dream had come true. Life was good!

Quackers Fights the Opossum

As spring heated up into summer, Quackers felt more and more the maternal urge. She felt like she wasn't a real female without hatching a clutch of chicks. So she sat on her nest day and night barely eating or bathing. When the people approached her to collect eggs, she would fluff up her feathers bobbing her neck up and down. I will not let you take my eggs, she hissed. She was ready to fight to protect her unborn children!

And fight she did! Early one morning, a large, gray, spikey thing with a long, pointed snout and a tail like a singed serpent came stalking into the garden. The pointed snout bared a mouth full of sharp, jagged teeth and growled. Quackers hissed a warning but the sharp teeth got closer and closer. As fast as lightening, Quackers shot out her neck and bit the thing on the shoulder. But the teeth opened wide and pounced on her, ripping open the top of her wing. Quackers leapt away to save her own life and watched the opossum break open every last egg and lick the shells clean. What a sad day it was for Quackers. She was too scared to go near her nest that day. Yet, the next day she took up her vigil sitting on her empty nest as if by sitting there, new eggs would magically appear.

The kindly woman noticed Quackers' maternal urge and grieved for her loss. The woman got some fertile duck eggs from a school farm and placed them in an incubator. The incubator had a constant machine hum and the eggs needed to be moistened and turned several times a day. A week passed and Quackers continued to sit day and night on her empty nest. The woman realized that Quackers could do a much better job at turning the eggs, and keeping them warm and moist. So she kept careful watch on Quackers, waiting for her to leave her empty nest. After many hours of dedicated sitting, Quackers got up for a brief break. The woman acted quickly. She removed all the eggs from the incubator and carried them out to the garden. She didn’t want Quackers to reject them, so she rubbed a bit of Quackers’ poop on each one. She placed the eggs in Quackers’ nest and lightly covered them with some leaves.

When Quackers returned to her nest, she pushed away the leaves to find a clutch of warm eggs. She looked them over, licking them and carefully rolling each one around. When they were all arranged to her satisfaction, she gladly sat down upon them and began the important work of sitting on her nest. She could feel the tiny beat of their hearts under her warm belly. Oh, how happy she felt to be sitting on a clutch of eggs! Like a miracle, she thought, my dream has come true.

Quackers Lays Eggs in her Nest

Quackers laid eight eggs before the people found her nest hidden behind the wall of ivy. The kindly woman and the small boy stole all her eggs away. They robbed the cradle of her unborn children! Obviously this place wasn't as safe as she had thought.

She needed to find a better place. She searched around the front of the whole giant building and found a lonely pathway on the other side. There, Quackers found a thicket of wide leaves. This little thicket looked like a safe enough place to build a nest. She began gathering twigs and chips from the mulch under the bushes. Again she arranged them in a nice circle around herself until she had built a cozy nest. She carefully covered it with dried leaves so no one would ever know it was there. She decided to never be seen during daylight near her nest in order to never give the people a clue of its location.

It was fourteen days before the people found the nest. It was actually the gentle man of the house who found it while gardening in that vicinity one day. Fourteen eggs lay in the nest. The kindly woman and small boy took a dozen eggs from her nest. They also added a plastic play egg to the remaining two.

Cradle robbers! And they must take me for a total fool. I know this toy egg isn't real. I know its not one of my eggs. As long as they left me a couple of eggs, though, I hope someday I'll get some chicks.

Quackers Discovers Kitty Kibble

When Quackers woke up from her nap, she decided to make the place a bit more homey. She arranged a little bowl shape of twigs and leaves right around herself under the ivy. Satisfied with her work, she carefully covered it over with dried ivy leaves. Then she went to search for some nice juicy bugs.

There were lots of delicious earthworms in the mulch. She loved pill bugs and earwigs, too. There seemed no end to the number and variety of juicy bugs to eat. She even found serpentine little chameleons under the rocks. By the time she found the bowl of chicken scratch, she was too full to eat any. She made a mental note of its location so she could find it again if she got in the mood for dry, cracked corn.

As she explored the area, Quackers found a large opening at the end of the deck. Inside the opening was a smooth floor without any plants or bugs. She detected a very interesting smell, a bit like fish. Not far across the smooth floor was a bowl full of little brown crosses. It smelled so good, she thought she'd taste one or two. Wow! That tastes great!

When Milo saw Quackers eating from his bowl, he immediately took action. The hair on his arched back stood straight up and he bared his teeth and hissed a severe warning. Quackers was too busy gobbling the delicious kitty kibble to pay attention to the furry thing. Milo bared his razor sharp claws and struck! He was surprised that there was nothing under those feathers but more feathers! Quackers swung around and shot out her neck as fast as a bullet and nipped Milo's shoulder. Boy! Was he surprised! This ball of feathers was no easy opponent. She was bigger than him, had no flesh under the feathers to dig claws into, and could bite. Milo decided to let the feather ball eat his kibble. He sat under the kitchen table and licked his back while Quackers cleaned out his bowl.

Quackers Finds a New Home

The lady opened the gunnysack that Quackers was in and turned it upside down. Quackers tumbled out into a little garden full of flowers and trees. Her heart was beating so fast it seemed like it would jump out of her chest. There was a deck next to the garden. It looked like a good place to hide. Quackers scurried under the deck and hid in a far corner hoping she wouldn't be found.

Quackers hid under the deck all day and all night. Early the next morning, she got a familiar sensation: an overwhelming urge. Plop! She laid an egg right there on the gravel under the deck. The gravel really hurt her feet and she was longing for a drink.

In the dawn's early twilight, Quackers ventured out to explore the garden. She found a big claw foot bathtub full of water but the sides were very high. If she could fly it would be no problem to get up on those sides. She tried to jump but it was way too high. She backed off and took a running leap. Flapping her wings the best she could, she got over the sides and into the nice cool water. Ooooh! What a relief on her sore, aching feet.

And fish! Gold fish. She never ate one of them before but it looked like a tasty breakfast. But first she needed to perform her ritual bath. Over and over she dunked her head. She beat the water with her wings and preened her feathers until she was gleaming white. Then she looked around. Maybe this place isn't so bad after all. She wondered if there were any other ducks to play with. Feeling clean and refreshed, she leapt out of the old claw foot tub and began to explore.

She found a furry orange animal with no beak, four legs and a long, furry tail. "Are you a duck?" she quacked, but the animal didn't seem to hear her. She asked louder and louder but still no response. Maybe he didn't understand what she was saying. Milo, the cat, just sat down and began licking his shoulder pretending he didn't notice this new invader of his territory.

I wonder what I can scrounge around here to eat? she thought to herself. As she began exploring the lovely little garden, she discovered a huge cache of her favorite delectable treats. Snails! M-m-m-m! Yummy fat juicy delicious fresh snails. O-o-o-o-o did she eat! One after another. Five, ten, twenty, thirty. They were everywhere. She ate snails until she was so stuffed she could hardly move. She found a nice shady place behind a draping wall of ivy, and sat down for a nap. She was beginning to like this place.

Quackers is Rescued from Slaughter

Quackers was born on a farm where ducks were raised for slaughter. The tips of her wings had been cut so she couldn't just fly away. When she was seven months old, she and all her siblings and many of her cousins were stuffed into cages and loaded on to a truck. She was so scared she cuddled up close to her brother and sister and they all quacked very loudly.

The truck drove a long way to another town across several rivers and over many mountains far away from the farm where she was born. It was market day in Vallejo and the farmer was hoping to sell all his ducks. One by one, her brothers, sisters and cousins were sold. Nearly half the ducks were gone when a kindly lady asked the farmer if any of the ducks laid eggs. "Certainly," said the farmer. "All the females lay eggs."

The lady lived nearby the market and had an organic fruit and vegetable garden. For years, they had been battling with snails and slugs that ate all the newly sprouted seeds and freshly transplanted seedlings. Her family didn't want to put poison down to kill the snails. They had tried every method they heard about but nothing really helped. Then one day, on her little son's music tape, she heard a song about a duck that loved to eat snails. It gave her an idea.

The kindly lady pointed to Quackers and said, "I'll take that one."

The farmer grabbed Quackers by her shoulders and stuffed her into a gunnysack. She tried to bite the farmer but failed. She was terrified.

"And what do I feed the duck?" asked the lady.

"Ordinary chicken scratch." said the farmer. "This will last you a few days." And he gave her a little box of some cracked corn to start off with. The lady loaded the gunnysack containing Quackers the Duck into her car and drove home.

L'il Survivor Braves The Giant Human

L'il Survivor was quacking up a storm all morning. The loud quacklarations got the human up early in the morning to find out what was wrong. L'il Survivor stood stretched up to her full height like a Runner Duck, and approached the human, chest heaving each time she took a breath for the next series of loud quacks. None of the other ducks were around.

The human wondered if a raccoon had attacked again, and went looking for dead bodies. Although Uncle Ralph's two brothers and Tuxedo are all missing, there were no dead bodies today, either in the fold area nor next door. The human did discover one of the Muscovy sisters sitting on a late season nest hidden in a thicket of ivy. Now that one of the young drakes had moved next door, they were making one last effort this year to make progeny. Mr. Alpha Interloper also migrated next door, so this nest might bear late season mixed species ducklings for the Muscovy sisters. They set all their last hopes on this clutch of eggs. Satisfied that there was no trouble from raccoons, the human returned inside the house. L'il Survivor continued quacking loudly at the foot of the stairs.

The human again went out and marveled at L'il Survivor's courage. L'il Survivor had so much chutspa that the human was quite sure she would turn out to be a drake. The human remembered how she had evaded the head-squeezing killer by disappearing under the murky pond water, and how hard it was to catch her when she was just a wee duckling. L'il Survivor strutted around at Mr. Interloper's side for a while as his favorite, and sometimes even led the whole flock. She also mastered a lot of respect and care from the members of the flock. L'il Survivor overcame her fear and walked right in front of the human, eye to eye, and loudly announced her issues. When the human entered the duck fold, L'il Survivor didn't run away like most other ducks do, but stood her ground. That's why the human thought she would become a drake. But all this loud commotion make L'il Survivor sound like a female.

Normally, ducks have yellow bills and drakes have greenish bills. L'il Survivor's bill is black. Normally female ducks make a big fuss quacking loudly, while drakes sound like they are murmuring. The human always gets the impression that the ducks are dissatisfied wives nagging and ragging while drakes placate them murmuring, "Yes dear, you are right dear, anything you say, dear...." But today L'il Survivor sounded like a complaining wife, not a murmuring drake. Her feathers, although nearly all black, are dull and boring, like female ducks tend to be. Therefore, the human strongly suspects that the one survivor of the 11 July ducklings may be female.

On the second round of investigation, the human found ample drinking water and grain in the feed trough. Perhaps she was complaining that the pond was too dirty. So the human drained the pond and refilled it with fresh water. Still the loud brouhaha persisted.

On the third investigation, the human thought L'il Survivor might be ill. Cringing in a corner, L'il Survivor allowed the human to pick her up without a struggle. The human inspected her all over for wounds but found none. Her feet didn't appear injured or swollen. Her flight feathers were just starting to grow in, and she had a beautiful mandala of brown and black feathers on her chest. L'il Survivor lay supine on the human's lap without complaint as the human did a careful inspection. Then the human clutched L'il Survivor to her chest to share heartbeat and breathing, and determine if she might have a fever. L'il Survivor's heart rate and breathing slowed down while the two beings from different chordate classes remained quietly in repose. No, the human concluded, L'il Survivor was not ill.

It was especially odd that the rest of the flock was nowhere to be seen. Usually, they surround L'il Survivor in order to protect her. But here she was, remaining in the nursery fold alone quacking up an unrelenting pandemonium. The cacophony lasted two days but the cause remained a mystery. By the third day, things were back to normal.