When I Was Younger

When I was younger…so much younger than today…I never needed any help in any way…but now my world has changed….I am not so self-assured…(The Beatles).. I am like an alien without a country of my own…so please, please help me…

It started out a muggy day, heavy with grey clouds, no breeze, ominous rumbles of thunder but…in the distance.  Papa Duck was out and about…God knows where. Somehow, it seemed like a good day to head inland, so I left my little ducks, Quack, Quack Quack and Bubbles (you heard that one before?) playing in the shallow end of the lake, safe from the big waves being created by the turbulent gusts of winds. 

As I got further and further from the shoreline, it occurred to me that the winds were picking up. No worries, I waddle close to the ground.  The wind will whistle over me if I keep my neck tucked under…as it always did in the past….you with me so far?

But who knew, a freak of nature, thunder, lightning, torrential rains, hurricane volume winds would come crashing around me and all other living, breathing beings, whether Two Footed, Four Footed, or gigantic old trees. It didn’t stop there…roofs lifted off homes, sheds were picked up, like feathers in the wind, cars were overturned…and like Dorothy and Toto, in The Wizard of Oz, I was swept up, up and away, it seemed like miles away, another county, landing in a farmers corn field, where the stalks were pounded flat in to ground as if war tanks had passed through.

OMG, where was my bucolic little lake and my baby ducks….Quack, Quack Quack and Bubbles …because family is everything to a duck. The good news was, even if my heart was racing, my wings were still intact. I could get home again…couldn’t I?  Now would be a most excellent time to have once of those Two Footed GPS Trackers, wouldn’t it?

The thunder, its lightning bolts and rain came to an abrupt end.  In rapid succession, clouds made way to blue sky. I could hear all the unsettled birds and ducks fearfully calling out location calls to try to get their loved ones home again, home again jiggety, jug, jig! I considered myself far superior and adept at trail blazing…if they would all just cease and desist their incessant noise so I could hear my own little family, surely overwhelmed and crying….because it is a well established by PETA that we too feel joy and pain just like your family pet.

North, South, East, West…which way to go.  I stood still.. observed…I saw crows going in all directions, a robin on an upended tree branch, mournfully chirping for her chicks and now non-existent nest. In the sky, I spied some geese in a practised formation heading west…surely they were fresh water bound…possibly my lake…my little ducklings.  With a great heave upwards, I was soaring, dipping and swerving, my eyes trained on the geese as they flew over fields, and forests, a farm or two, a clearing.  My wings tired but my need to succeed obliterated the pain and fatigue.

All of a sudden… I saw a gleaming in the distance, a mirage in the desert…was it my lake or a cruel hallucination?  Closer and closer and YES, it was my lake…..now where were my little ducklings.  Around and around our little dock, I went, peering in between the slats, now some missing.  No duckies.  I went on land, looked under the only fir-tree left standing…no babies there…I slipped back in to the water, ducked my head to catch a minnow.

As I raised my neck, I was sure I heard faint little quacks, over there, behind the rocks, peeking out at me … My Quack, Quack Quack and Bubbles, their brave chorus rising, the closer I got to them.

My ducklings are safe…we’re together again…God is Good…still, I’m thinking,  a duck’s life is not all its quacked up to be….