WELL, AIN'T THAT

JUST DUCKY.

ucks. What can I say... I like 'em. Peitite or tall, skinny or chubby, cute or ugly (and it doesn't make you a bad duck), they all seem to me to have great comic potential. This alone would be enough to make them a favorite with me, but it's not nearly all I find that I like about them.

As far as I know, they all have bills, but none of them are required to hold down a job. They can fly wherever they want, whenever they want , for free on a moments notice. They, and their friends, fly off to the most beautiful and exotic places on a whim and a feather. They go swimming year round, and fishing whenever they feel like it. And if for some reason they don't feel like fish for dinner, all they need do is hang out at the park and total strangers will feed them while acting interested in just about anything they feel like doing. No tellin' how long they've been getting by with this. Humans had something similar going on in the '60's, however, it proved to be not too well thought out, and consequently, short lived... not enough feathers maybe.

In all honesty, I am not an advocate of caging or otherwise making pets of animals that would choose on their own to be free. Nevertheless, if a person was to be so lucky as to have a duck choose them for a close personal relationship, well, I should think that person would have an obligation to treat their newly found fine feathered friend to a good float on a regular basis.

Anything is better than nothing... count on it.

I don't feel this can be stressed too highly.

Easy as it may be to sing the praises of these little guys, I suppose I should point out that, as is true with most any critter, there are good ones and bad ones.

Actually, I have way over simplified this good/bad duck thing. You could, of course split them up into endless hierarchies of types, temperaments and behavioral preferences.

You get the idea.

As a young lad, looking up into the sky to see may first flock of ducks was, in fact, a pretty amazing experience. Up until then I had been led, by a flock of adults, to believe that all animals were basically unthinking, uncaring, and uncivilized. But, there they were, flying thousands of miles cross-country in a beautiful and politely dignified V-formation...  and not one clergyman, lawyer, psychiatrist, politician, law enforcement officer or air traffic controller in the bunch.

Some of the adults tried to make me believe that animals were merely mimicking humans... but I knew better.

After that, every time I saw one of those formations, I would spend some time imagining all the training and preparation it must have taken to pull it off.