Fifty Shades of Duck

My Dear Princess, Loulou and Dear Fellows,

This is Marms, seeing me off to work this morning. He was literally waiting for me in the front garden this morning and followed me down the road (see extras). 

He's here again now. I assume he DOES have a home to go to. And there are plenty of pensioners in the area to mooch off. But he loves our place. 

But I had to go to work. Just for the look of the thing, after yesterday. Also I had nearly all meetings all day. It was all right. They were productive and good-natured. I don't mind work at present. 

Gromit took me for a coffee and we talked about animals, as we typically do. She is crazy about them and likes to tell me stories about her horses and her chickens. 

Because I knew she would like it, I showed her Loulou's duck.

She did love it, of course. But she offered sage words of advice. NEVER GET DUCKS. That is her advice to you all. She had two ducks and they were so cute and adorable, she got a drake. 

"Now we have FIFTY ducks," she told me. 

"And it doesn't matter if you give them away or take their eggs or they get killed on the road or killed by rats or they fly away," she said, warming to her theme. "There are ALWAYS fifty ducks."

She has a particular contempt for female ducks. "They are SUCH terrible mothers," she told me. "They are always leaving their chicks behind and the chicks can't catch up and then they die. We always have dead chicks all over our property."

"And people come and JUDGE us," she complained, "And I tell them it's not me, it's these bad-mother ducks. And they live in swampwater and they poo in it and swim in it and eat in it. The chickens are SO much cleaner by comparison."

"And the drakes are SEX PESTS and they have duck sex with the ducks and the female ducks always look like they've been out for a night on the town with their back feathers all ruffled up, and you see them do the walk of shame with their feathers all over the place and then the next thing you know they are laying MORE eggs and FIFTY DUCKS."

"And the males are ALWAYS chasing the females. I'll be trying to walk through the yard, when suddenly there's a female with ruffled feathers running away from three males in front of me, and another one running away in the opposite direction behind me."

"Never get a duck," she repeated. 

So that was my surreal conversation out of the way for the day.

And now it is the evening. Our boys are in and safe, but the back garden is ALIVE with hedgehogs and cats. No ducks as yet, but you know it is just a matter of time.

S.