Chapter 15 (Animals I’ve Known and Loved, cont.)
Discrimination Among the Ducks
We finally had three pekins, because Mom finally took one of the pair’s fertile eggs and put it under a Muscovy hen. Maybe it was just that our Pekin hen wasn’t a good brooder, as she never successfully hatched one egg in her nest. Pekins, it seemed just sat. Mom used to say the Pekin ducks cooked their eggs. So her offspring was hatched under a Muscovy hen. The Muscovy ducks were better brooders. They knew just how long to sit at any one time; they turned their eggs daily, and sometimes purposely got wet before sitting on the eggs again, as if they determined that their clutch of eggs needed cooling or the moisture.
We thought the pekin duckling was a cross-breed, as it had a black crest on its head, though otherwise as stark white, big, beautiful pekin drake. It was the typical Ugly Duckling story, for as soon as this beautiful drake developed, the Muscovy ducks shunned him, pecking at him if he came near. The pekin drake disowned him as well. Eventually the pekin hen somehow knew that this stately young drake was her own son, and they hung around together. While the Muscovy ducks worked the brook within the fencing, the pekin hen with the stately drake son would paddle together on the other side--the lower unfenced portion. Both duck groups working the brook free of the weeds and forget-me-not along its edge. The pekins began to drift further and further from the flock daily until one day they were gone.
Jerry set out following the flow of the brook along the base of a shoulder of hills that stretched from east across the meadow, then northwest, weaving its way through Hall’s meadows then finally north through the pines. My brother’s trek took him all the way to a smelly piggery. There in a filthy muddy pond was the old pekin hen and her regal son, not looking so elegant, but both seemingly very content. No longer was their plumage a sparkling white, but streaked with mud.
No amount of my brother’s calling to them from the edge of their new home could coax them to come back. “They felt welcome there.” my brother said “In our duck yard they were outcasts. There, they felt like they belonged.”
When Jerry got involved in the more profitable business of delivering newspapers, I took over the daily feeding of our Muscovy ducks. Eventually when I took over part of the paper route, my mother found a buyer and sold all the ducks.
Discrimination Among the Ducks
We finally had three pekins, because Mom finally took one of the pair’s fertile eggs and put it under a Muscovy hen. Maybe it was just that our Pekin hen wasn’t a good brooder, as she never successfully hatched one egg in her nest. Pekins, it seemed just sat. Mom used to say the Pekin ducks cooked their eggs. So her offspring was hatched under a Muscovy hen. The Muscovy ducks were better brooders. They knew just how long to sit at any one time; they turned their eggs daily, and sometimes purposely got wet before sitting on the eggs again, as if they determined that their clutch of eggs needed cooling or the moisture.
We thought the pekin duckling was a cross-breed, as it had a black crest on its head, though otherwise as stark white, big, beautiful pekin drake. It was the typical Ugly Duckling story, for as soon as this beautiful drake developed, the Muscovy ducks shunned him, pecking at him if he came near. The pekin drake disowned him as well. Eventually the pekin hen somehow knew that this stately young drake was her own son, and they hung around together. While the Muscovy ducks worked the brook within the fencing, the pekin hen with the stately drake son would paddle together on the other side--the lower unfenced portion. Both duck groups working the brook free of the weeds and forget-me-not along its edge. The pekins began to drift further and further from the flock daily until one day they were gone.
Jerry set out following the flow of the brook along the base of a shoulder of hills that stretched from east across the meadow, then northwest, weaving its way through Hall’s meadows then finally north through the pines. My brother’s trek took him all the way to a smelly piggery. There in a filthy muddy pond was the old pekin hen and her regal son, not looking so elegant, but both seemingly very content. No longer was their plumage a sparkling white, but streaked with mud.
No amount of my brother’s calling to them from the edge of their new home could coax them to come back. “They felt welcome there.” my brother said “In our duck yard they were outcasts. There, they felt like they belonged.”
When Jerry got involved in the more profitable business of delivering newspapers, I took over the daily feeding of our Muscovy ducks. Eventually when I took over part of the paper route, my mother found a buyer and sold all the ducks.
posted by Cranberry Jo @ 9/16/2007 01:43:00 PM
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