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.