Ducking

“ Really it's all over the world. I've seen Scotch herd boys use something like it to scare the cattle, and Mexican sheep herders in Texas to make the sheep run together when they scatter too far. Of course there's really nothing to be scared of, but when it comes near you, you feel inclined to duck. To me, it was the feeling that the flat piece of wood would fly off and hit me. You always duck when you hear a whizzing. Still, the priests or medicine men trade on the head-ducking tendency. ”

“ After they have come out by the walk a few times, they will begin to go in by it. It is very important to make sure that if young ducks are given water to play in, they can get out of it easily. Many who have not had experience in handling them neglect this and feel very bad when some of their ducklings are drowned.
If proper provision is made for the safety of the ducklings, they afford a great deal of entertainment. One of the first things a little duck does when it gets into the water is to go through the peculiar ducking performance that gives the name to its species. ”

“ Special punishment was provided for women. Old Dr. Johnson said gruffly to a lady friend: “Madam, there are different ways of restraining evil; stocks for men, a ducking-stool for women, pounds for beasts.” The old English instrument of punishment,—as [Pg 92] old as the Doomsday survey,—the cucking-stool or ducking-stool, was in vogue here, was insultingly termed a “publique convenience,” and was used in the Southern and Central colonies for the correction of common scolds. ”

“ As a swimmer and diver the tame Duck has very few equals among feathered folk. Even as a duckling she does not require a single swimming-lesson, but at the first sight of water plunges boldly in and begins hunting for worms and other delicacies. ”

“ When little Wood Ducks are hatched and become quite dry, their mother takes them in her beak, by the wing, one by one, and flies down to the ground with them. As soon as her brood of ten or a dozen is thus collected, she leads them off to the nearest water, and the whole lot of Ducklings go in swimming, bobbing for food as if they were a year old instead of only a few hours. ”

“ If a duck falls dead, they plunge to bring it; but many of them wait to see how he falls, and whither he swims, and they seem to be as aware as the gunner, of the improbability of capture, and will not make the attempt, knowing from experience that a bird merely winged will generally save himself by swimming and diving. These dogs usually bring one duck at a time out of the water; but a real Newfoundland, who was with me and my company this autumn, was seen on several occasions to swim twenty yards further, and take a second in the mouth to carry on shore. ”

“ The wild ducks splattered and quacked as they paddled busily hither and thither, visiting each little bay and reed-clump at the water's edge. Sometimes, surrendering themselves wholly to sport and play, they formed little groups of two or three; and now one group, and then another, would race, half-swimming, half-flying, from bank to bank or from the rock to the salmon “hover” at the lower end of the pool. The otter remembered her experience with the dabchick, and believed that to capture a full-grown duck would tax her utmost strength and cause a general alarm. ”

“ At dawn, as I lay half-awake, I heard a sound that made me jump to my gun—the soft quacking of wild duck in the creek. Stealing cautiously down through the fringe of she-oaks, I came to a fine broad pool, in the centre of which was a small sandbank, whereon stood a black duck with a brood of seven half-fledged ducklings around her, dabbling merrily amongst the weed and débris of the margin. Of course, no one who thinks, unless impelled by sheer hunger, would shoot either an incubating or “just familied” duck, and I laid down my gun with an exclamation of disappointment. ”

“ Don't turn your feet inwards; a well-educated duckling always keeps his legs far apart, like his father and mother, just so,—look! now bow your necks, and say, 'quack.'"
And they did as they were told. But the other ducks who were in the yard looked at them, and said aloud, "Only see! now we have another brood,—as if there were not enough of us already; and fie! how ugly that one is! we will not endure it." And immediately one of the ducks flew at him, and bit him in the neck. ”

“ Now bend your neck, and say 'Quack!'"
But the Ugly Duckling was an odd bird, as well as an ill-favoured one, and gave much trouble and excited much jealousy in the duck-yard. He quacked indeed, but he would not bend his head or bow to the old duck properly.
"He remained too long in the egg-shell," mused the maternal bird; "and therefore his figure, like his manners, is not properly formed on the true duck model. But as he's a male duck it won't matter so much. I think he'll prove strong, and be able to fight his way through the world." ”

“ Many a day did the little people roam about one by one, or all together, round the wood, often getting themselves sadly draggled with mud and torn with brambles—but the beautiful pond they never found again.
Nor did the ducklings, I suppose; for they wandered no more from the farmyard, to the old mother-hen's great content. They grew up into fat and respectable ducks—five white ones and three gray ones—waddling about, very content, though they never saw water, except the tank which was placed for them to paddle in. ”

“ These ducks are generally to be seen perched up in the trees along the banks or else on some stump in mid-stream, although occasionally one perceives them floating with the current or swimming on the surface of the water. They dive with lightning-like rapidity, and very often succeed in getting away, even when hit severely. ”

“ The back of the Cursaal looks into a sort of parade, upon which, after dinner, hundreds of visiters sit in groups, to drink cheap coffee, listen to a band of most excellent cheap music, and admire, instead of swans, an immense number of snail-gobbling ducks and ducklings, which, swimming about a pond, shaded by weeping willows and acacias, come when they are called, and, ducklike, of course eat whatever is thrown to them. ”

“ When one is duck-shooting on inland waters, sitting alert in the bow of the skiff with his gun ready for the expected gaudy wood duck, or plump mallard, or loud quacking dusky duck, or swift-winged teal, to rise with a splashing flutter out of the wild rice, and there is a sudden beating of broad wings among the sedges with a startled guttural quack, and one's heart leaps to his throat and his gun to his shoulder, and then—only an awkward bittern climbs the September breeze with a slow incline, there is a vengeful temptation to let drive at the disappointing good-for-nothing. ”

“ All the Ducks are different; all have little blots and streaks that are their labels, or like the uniforms of soldiers. 'Now, if I can put their uniforms down on paper I'll know the Ducks as soon as I see them on a pond a long way off.' So he set to work and drew what he could find. One of his friends had a stuffed Wood-duck, so the 'Boy-that-wanted-to-know' drew that from a long way off. He got another from an engraving and two more from the window of a taxidermist shop. ”

“ To hunters who are accustomed to glide through the forest observantly and with caution, most interesting little scenes of animal life are sometimes revealed. One day, in the snow-time, as I was roaming the woods close by a Canadian river, after wild-turkeys, I noticed a flock of mergansers,—thereabouts usually called saw-billed ducks, or sheldrakes,—swimming in a small air-hole that had remained open in the frozen surface of the river. There were four or five ducks, and the pool might have been about ten feet by six in size. ”

“ When, as is frequently the case, the nest is situated over water, the ducklings throw themselves down into the water very soon after they are hatched, but in other instances they are carried in the beaks of their parents, as is the case with those of the ordinary wild duck when the nest is built above the level of the ground. ”

“ The wild duck's nest is usually placed on the ground in some sheltered spot close to still or running water, and the ducklings swim like corks, soon learning the proper use of their flat little bills in gobbling up floating insects and other waterlogged food. Occasionally ducks nest in trees and they have been known to take possession of a deserted rook's nest. ”

“ One's head, projecting over their hard, sharp, uncompromising lines, catches the eye of a wary bird, and recesses made by their angles are not often to be found where one wants them. Twice has the mother duck been slightly suspicious, and now, to my chagrin—though it really should not be, for what can be more entertaining?—she goes to the length of calling her ducklings off the rock. ”

“ Duck's have their haunts along the solitary places of the river, and alight in flocks upon the broad bosom of the overflowed meadows. Their flight is too rapid and determined for the eye to catch enjoyment from it, although it never fails to stir up the heart with the sportsman's ineradicable instinct. ”

“ No one who knows the self-forgetting devotion with which the birds brood will be surprised that it is possible to come so near an eider-duck sitting in her nest, but it may well excite the astonishment of even an experienced naturalist to learn that the duck suffers one to handle the eggs under her breast without flying away, and that she does not even allow herself to be diverted from her brooding when one lifts her from the nest and places her upon it again, or lays her on the ground at some little distance in order to see the charmingly quaint way in which she waddles back to her brood. ”

“ Then there was no place to swim but in a muddy little duck-pond that almost dried up in the heat of summer.
But the worst thing of all at the farmhouse was the way the farmer’s wife used to steal the duck’s eggs. No matter how carefully Mrs. Duck hid her eggs, Mrs. Farmer always found them and took them away. Once she put a number of them in a hen’s nest, and allowed a hen to set on them. After a while the hen hatched out eleven of the cunningest, fuzziest, yellowest ducklings that ever were seen. The hen was just as pleased and proud as though she had laid the eggs herself. ”

“ They grow used to this strange order of things after a bit, it is true, and are less anxious and excited. When the duck-brood returns safely again and again from what the hen-mother thinks will prove a watery grave, she becomes accustomed to the situation, I suppose. I find that at night she stands by the pond for what she considers a decent, self-respecting length of time, calling the ducklings out of the water; then, if they refuse to come, the mother goes off to bed and leaves them to Providence, or Phœbe. ”

“ A lame duckling, shall we say?"
He suggested that a lame duckling might grow up into a wonderful swan, and munched his apple ruminatively. Neither happened to think of a certain incident, much discussed, in which that edible figured prominently. And he did not ask a question.
"But how does he get his work done, with such a crew?"
"We're not all lame ducks, you know. And—you work hard, don't you?" ”

“ The Duckling knew the glorious creatures, and was seized with a strange sadness.
"I will fly to them, those kingly birds!" said he. "They will kill me, because I, ugly as I am, have dared to approach them. But it matters not. Better to be killed by them than to be [40] bitten by the Ducks, pecked by the Hens, kicked by the girl who feeds the poultry, and to have so much to suffer during the winter!" ”

“ These great logger-headed ducks, which sometimes weigh as much as twenty-two pounds, were called by the old navigators, from their extraordinary manner of paddling and splashing over the water, race-horses, but now much more properly steamers. Their wings are too small and weak to allow of flight, but by their aid, partly swimming and partly flapping the surface of the water, they move very quickly. ”

“ But it would be too melancholy if I were to tell all the misery and care which the Duckling had to endure in the hard winter. It lay out on the moor among the reeds when the sun began to shine again and the larks to sing; it was a beautiful spring.
Then all at once the Duckling could flap its wings; they beat the air more strongly than before, and bore it strongly away; and before it well knew how all this had happened, it found itself in a great garden, where the elder trees smelt sweet, and bent their long green branches down to the canal that wound through the region. ”

“ These ducks, indeed, or at least the larger kind of them, which are of great size, are never to be seen swimming, but they often walk about by the edge of the lake. They have a most portentous appearance, and walk with an extraordinary swing of the body, first to one side and then another. ”

“ Everybody has observed how ducks will gather into a corner of the farm-yard and stand still, and apparently breathless, as if listening to a jocose tale fished out of their Decameron of a gutter, then break into hearty quacking, which reminds one of the wheezing of snips of fellows over their muddy jest. ”

“ The sitting duck comes for food every two or three days, and that is all we see of her for some time, until at length she may be seen coming through the meadow, the half-grown mowing grass behind her trembling and waving in an unusual manner: by-and-by, the road or shorter grass is reached, when it is found the proud mother is bringing home her little fluffy family of perhaps eight to eleven darkie ducklings—quick, active, tiny things that refuse at first all friendly advances, but becoming accustomed to their surroundings soon behave much in the manner of their elders. ”

“ Some wild geese came by, and they laughed at the duckling, too. Just then some guns {187} went bang! bang! The hunters were all around. The hunting dogs came splash! into the swamp, and one dashed close to the duckling. The dog looked at him and went on.
"Well, I can be thankful for that," sighed he. "I am so ugly that even the dog will not bite me."
When all was quiet, the duckling started out again. A storm was raging, and he found shelter in a poor hut. Here lived an old woman with her cat and her hen. The old woman could not see well, and she thought he was a fat duck. ”