Once upon a pond,
a long long stream ago,
in a meadow far far away,
there lived a community of field and water creatures,
all of whom were pretty happy with their lot.
In fact they were happy enough so that every year in mid summer they gathered cheerily together and partied in the long grass, eating the ample food the meadow, stream and deep pond provided.
It was such a good place to be that visitors came from afar to stay for months and raise their kids .
Two regular visitors to the pond were Max and Mavis, a pair of migrating mallards. Every year they stopped over, met up with their meadow friends, ate the grass and grubs, laid a couple of eggs, or four, and raised their brood.
There was quite a lot of brooding going on in the meadow at this time of year, not the orgy you may be considering but a zesty thrill did waft enticingly through the meadow and much merriment ensued.
Around the middle of the season when all the kittens, pups, pullets and youngsters were generally getting too big and energetic, the meadow dwellers held a huge party. The badgers set about building mud slides and sand pits to play on, the rabbits dug huge tunnels to explore and there were water challenges, hiding, and chasing games. Play fights and races through the meadow and woods were encouraged. The young animals all loved the fun of the party which went on for ages until they were all tired but had grown much bigger and stronger and found they wanted to fend for themselves. All this activity increased the young appetites and their hunger had an impact on the available food supply and, not unusually, competition for the best spots around the pond grew keen.
This year, Mavis had laid just one egg, a disappointment to Max , and to Mavis who thought she must be getting old. It was a big egg though, so they were very excited when it hatched and a large fluffy girl chirped strongly.
They called her Mildred , meaning gentle strength, or Millie as she immediately became known. They proudly swam round the pond and waddled through the meadow showing off Millie while searching out a meal from the depleted stock of grubs and greens.
It was a few weeks before they noticed that Millie wasn’t feathering, but was becoming downier and fluffier every day. Not the usual thing for a mallard chick. The Canada geese fledglings, sporting their new plumage, started to laugh and snigger at Millie, the badger cubs chuckled and the moles and voles around the pond edge made squeaky jokes and teased her. Millie became very unhappy and began to hide away in the reeds. Max and Mavis tried in vein get her to come out and play.
The reed beds where she hid were dense and broke up the sunlight so there was not much food in there. Millie had soon eaten out the few grubs and greens that lived in the reeds. She became very hungry and was tempted to stop hiding but she couldn’t stand the teasing and attention she would get out in the open. To get to the scarce food in the shelter her large beak had become quite hard from hunting in the soil and biting the tough reeds and she had discovered that she could crack beetles and bugs not usually on the mallard menu. One day she found, hung under a matt of reeds, a papery package with what smelt like yummy grubs inside.
She nibbled at the side of it and released a delicious grub, but immediately there was a lot of buzzing noise and many angry bugs flew at Millie and tried to sting her away. The fluff that had caused her so much teasing was so dense that the stings could not get through and, actually, the little flying things were quite delicious too. Millie was a very happy duck as there seemed to be lots of these hanging grub packages and tasty buzzing bugs around.
Away from the reed bed, and as this warm summer played over the meadow, the animals became more and more bothered by the plague of wasps which were making meadow play and hunting very unpleasant. The nests seemed to be everywhere and the stings very painful. Many meadow dwellers began to think that this was no longer a nice place to be. Meadow meetings were held to solve the problem but there seemed to be no answer and the animals were getting scared and hungry, afraid to forage and get stung. The geese had stories of a breed of duck in Africa that hunted wasps but those heroes were far too far away from the meadow to be of any help.
In no time at all Millie was treated to the deepest of apologies from all the meadow dwellers and was happily shown to where more delicious grub nests were. Millie became popular and started to grow into a fine duckling. Max and Mavis were very happy Millie had made new friends and with lots of nuzzling and preening they said farewell as they once again flew off southbound.
With all her new food and friends, Millie grew very fast and started to fledge into a rather superior form of large mallard with slightly strange patterned feathers. Probably just as well then , that Max had left or he would have noticed the feathers matched a lone, dark gander he and Mavis had flown with for a few days on their last migration south to Africa.
AFTERTHOUGHT,
It turns out that the solution to a problem may not always be that far canard.
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