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Clever Duck

Roaring Brook Press

"Ignoramus"

"Ignoramuses!"said Mrs. Stout. "That's what they are. Ignoramuses, every one of them."

"Who, dear?" asked her friend Mrs. Portly.

"Why, the other animals on this farm, of course."

"Leaving aside us pigs, you mean?" said another friend, Mrs. O'Bese.

"Naturally, Mrs. O'Bese," replied Mrs. Stout. "All pigs are born with a high degree of intelligence, that goes without saying." There came grunts of agreement from the other sows — Mrs. Chubby, Mrs. Tubby, Mrs. Swagbelly, and Mrs. Roly-Poly — as they rooted in the mud of their paddock.

"I am speaking," went on Mrs. Stout, "of such creatures as the cows ..."

"Dullards!" put in Mrs. Chubby.

"... and the sheep ..."

"Simpletons!" said Mrs. Tubby.

"... and the chickens ..."

"Morons! said Mrs. Swagbelly. "... and the ducks." "Idiots!" cried Mrs. Roly-Poly.

"Imbeciles! Half-wits! Dimwits! Nitwits!"

"Just so," said Mrs. Stout. "Each and every other creature on the farm is, as I said, an ignoramus. Why, there's not one of them that would even know what the word meant."

"Surely, dear," said Mrs. Portly, "they couldn't be that stupid?"

"There's one sure way to find out," said Mrs. O'Bese.

Unlike the others, Mrs. O'Bese was a pig with a sense of humor, and it struck her that here was a chance for a bit of fun.

On one side of the sows' paddock was a field in which the dairy herd was grazing, and Mrs. O'Bese made her way up to the fence, close to which one of the cows stood watching her approach.

"Good morning," said Mrs. O'Bese.

"Good moo-ning," said the cow.

"Are you," asked Mrs. O'Bese, "an ignoramus?"

"Noo," said the cow. "I'm a Holstein."

Mrs. O'Bese went to a second side of the paddock, where there was a field full of sheep, and spoke to one.

"Hey, ewe!" she said.

"Me?" said the sheep.

"Yes, you. Who did you think I was talking to?"

"Ma?" said the sheep.

Some mothers do have 'em, thought the sow.

"Ignoramus," she said.

"Baa," said the sheep.

"D'you know what it means?"

"Na, na," said the sheep.

"Well," said Mrs. O'Bese, "that cow over there is one and you are too."

"Na, na," said the sheep. "Me not two. Me one."

Mrs. O'Bese shook her head so that her ears flapped.

"Ass," she grunted.

"Na, na," said the sheep. "Me ewe."

On the third side of the paddock was an orchard with a duck pond in it. A flock of chickens was pecking around under the apple trees, and there were a number of ducks, some walking around, some swimming in the pond.

Mrs. O'Bese addressed a hen.

"Ignoramus," she said.

"What?" said the hen.

"Ignoramus. That's what you are, isn't it?"

"I don't get you,? said the hen.

"It's a word," said Mrs. O'Bese, "used to describe someone who has very little knowledge."

"Knowledge?" said the hen. "What does that mean?"

Mrs. O'Bese sighed.

"How many beans make five?" she said.

The hen put her head on one side, considering.

"What's a bean?" she said.

"Oh, go lay an egg!" said Mrs. O'Bese.

"Okay," said the hen, and went.

A duck waddled past.

I'll try a different approach, thought the sow. Maybe I've been too abrupt. I'll turn on the charm.

"Top of the mornin' to ye, me fine friend!" she cried. "Would you be after sparin' me a minute of your valuable time?"

The duck stopped. It was an ordinary sort of bird, brown and white in color, and looking, Mrs. O'Bese thought, as stupid as all of its kind. It stared at her with beady eyes.

Then it said, "Quack!"

At this moment Mrs. O'Bese heard the sound of heavy bodies squelching through the mud and looked around to see that Mrs. Stout and Mrs. Portly, Mrs. Chubby, Mrs. Tubby, Mrs. Swagbelly, and Mrs. Roly-Poly were all standing behind her.

"Listen to this," she grunted softly at them, and to the duck she said, loudly and slowly as one does to foreigners, "Now then, my friend. I wonder if perhaps you'd be able to help me. There's this long word I've heard, and I'm just a silly old sow, so I don't know the meaning of it."

"Quack!" said the duck again.

"The word," said Mrs. O'Bese, "is 'ignoramus.'"

"Is that so?" said the duck.

"Yes. Can you tell me what it means?"

"I must say," said the duck, "you surprise me. I had been under the distinct impression that pigs were reasonably intelligent. If you don't know what an ignoramus is, then you must be one."

Ed-u-cation

The seven sows stood in shocked silence as the duck waddled away.

Then a black-and-white sheepdog came trotting across the orchard and approached the duck, tail wagging.

"Good morning, Damaris," said the dog.

"It was a good morning, Rory," said the duck, "until just now. Those sows! They are so patronizing. They think that they're so intelligent and that the rest of us are fools. They need to be taught a lesson."

Rory stared thoughtfully at the sows.

"You're right, Damaris," he said. "I wouldn't mind wiping those smug smiles off their fat faces. I'll think of something."

"I'm sure you will, Rory," said Damaris.

"You're miles cleverer than them anyway. I should know. If it hadn't been for you, I'd just be an ordinary duck."

An ordinary duck Damaris certainly was not. That is to say, she was not stupid and thoughtless and empty-headed as most ducks are. On the contrary, she was educated, and her teacher had been Rory. It had happened like this.

All sheepdogs are born with the instinct for herding things, and they begin as soon as they can run around. Rory as a puppy had often come into the orchard, practicing his craft upon the chickens and ducks.

The hens squawked and flapped and ran out of his way, but the ducks were slower moving and tended, like sheep, to bunch together and, like sheep, to protest loudly at being forced to go this way and that. Usually they managed to make their way to the pond, where the puppy could not follow, but one morning he came upon a mother duck with a brood of baby ducklings, and Rory set himself to keep these little ones away from the water.

For some time he moved them here and there, while the duck quacked distractedly in the background, but then a strange thing happened.

One of the ducklings flatly refused to move any farther. It simply sat down in the grass, seemingly unafraid of what must have appeared to it a very large animal, while the rest hurried off to join their mother.

The puppy sniffed at the duckling.

"What's the matter?" he said.

"The matter," piped the duckling," is that you're a big bully and I'm tired."

"I was only practicing," said Rory.

"What for?"

"Herding sheep. That's what I will be doing. When I'm grown up. I'm a sheepdog, you see. My name's Rory. What's yours?"

"Damaris," said the duckling.

"That's a nice name," said Rory.

Ducks were silly animals, he knew that, his mother had told him, but this one seemed quite sensible.

"Look, Damaris," he said, "I'm sorry if I've upset you. Like I said, I have to practice — it's all part of my education."

"Ed-u-cation?" said the duckling. "What does that mean?"

"Why, learning things, being taught things you wouldn't otherwise know."

"Who teaches you?" asked Damaris.

"My mom. Doesn't your mom teach you?"

Does she? Damaris thought. She didn't teach me to swim. I did that on my own, and the same with walking and running and eating and speaking. Yet here was this dog being taught things, like herding sheep. I don't suppose I could do that, but all the same, it would be nice to have a proper — what was it? — education. I wonder — could Rory teach me?

And, indeed, that was how things turned out.

That first meeting between puppy and duckling led, as time went by, to a regular friendship between dog and duck.

Every day the young Rory would come and spend time with the young Damaris and pass on to his friend all the things that he had learned. And because dogs — and especially sheepdogs — are highly intelligent creatures, and perhaps because Rory was a particularly bright sheepdog, and certainly because Damaris was most anxious to learn about the world in a way no duck ever had before, teacher and pupil worked wonderfully well together.

One day, about a year after their first meeting, the two friends were chatting together out in the orchard.

Conversation was something they much enjoyed, something that was denied the other ducks, who only ever spoke to one another in monosyllables.

"Grub up" (when the farmer brought their food), "Nice day" (when it was pouring rain), and such brief sentences were the limits of their conversational powers.

"In the matter of intelligence," Damaris said, "to which creature on the farm would you give the highest marks?"

Rory yawned.

"Me," he said.

"Dogs in general, you mean?"

"Yes."

"And the lowest?"

"Your lot, I suppose," said Rory.

"Ah," said Damaris. "So I am one of the stupidest creatures on the farm?" Rory got to his feet, tail wagging.

"No, Damaris," he said. "You're different. You are a clever duck."

A Lovely Little Scheme

Now, in summertime some months later, as they stood and looked at the seven sows, Rory said, "Why have you got your feathers in a twist anyway? What did they say to you?"

"One of them asked me the meaning of a word," said Damaris. "Pretended she didn't know it. I was watching her before, going around to the cows and to the sheep, and she spoke to a hen, too, tried it on all of them, I bet."

"What word?" said Rory.

"'Ignoramus.' As if I didn't know."

"Typical," said Rory. "Trying to make other animals feel small. I've got a good mind to go out there and bite one or two of their fat backsides. Oh, they're so smug!"

"Look!" said Damaris. "There's another one coming to join them."

"That's the boar," said Rory, "and that's exactly what he is."

"How d'you mean?"

"Haven't you ever heard him? Wordy, pompous, opinionated, thinks he's always right about everything, never listens to anyone else. The sows are bad enough, but he's the biggest bore of the lot. Listen to him now — grunt, grunt, grunt, snort, snort — what rubbish he's talking."

In fact, the boar was indulging in his usual reply to his wives' usual greeting. The registered name on his pedigree was Firingclose General Lord Nicholas of Winningshot, but the sows simply called him General.

"Good morning, General," they all said as he came squelching through the churned-up paddock. Then, with an inward sigh, each one of them tried hard to put her mind into neutral, knowing only too well what was coming.

"Ah, ladies," said the General in his deep voice. "Once again I find that I must question your customary greeting. There is no doubt that it is morning, but what precisely do you mean by 'good'? Virtuous? Pious? Kind? Well behaved? Worthy?"

"Sure, and it isn't raining, General," said Mrs. O'Bese.

"But," said the General, "is the absence of rainfall in itself good? Observe, for example, yonder duck, which to my surprise is consorting with a dog, an unlikely partnership in my opinion, of mammal and bird, of predator and prey, of ... what was I saying?"

"Yonder duck," said Mrs. Stout.

"Ah yes," said the General, "I recall. We were discussing the word 'good.' Such a beautiful morning as this may be good for us pigs, but I think, ladies, that we all know what kind of weather best pleases ducks."

"Rain," said Mrs. Portly, Mrs. Chubby, Mrs. Tubby, Mrs. Swagbelly, and Mrs. Roly-Poly in tones of deepest boredom.

"Exactly," said the General.

He moved ponderously toward the orchard fence.

"Now then," he said, "I hope that all you ladies realize, thanks to my brief explanation, that what is a 'good' morning for a pig may not be a 'good' morning for a duck. Have I made myself clear?"

There was no reply, and the boar turned around to see that the seven sows had made themselves scarce.

"See what I mean?" said Rory. "He's bored 'em all to tears."

"Oh, Rory!" Damaris cried. "He's worse than the sows! I don't know how they can stand him."

"I don't know how we stand the lot of them," said Rory. "Not all farmers keep pigs, you know, Mom told me. We're just unlucky."

Damaris was silent for a while, thinking.

Then she said, "You spoke of 'keeping' pigs. Well, that means managing them, looking after them, feeding them, and so forth, I know that. But it also means keeping them in, doesn't it? There's pig netting all around their paddock. But down the other end, near the road, there's a gate."

Rory sat up abruptly.

"You mean ...?" he said.

"I mean," said Damaris, "that if somehow or other that gate was opened, then those patronizing sows and that pontificating boar might just ... what's the word I'm looking for?"

"... Emigrate!" cried Rory. "Damaris, you're a genius! Let's go and have a look at that gate right now. Race you!" And away he ran.

Damaris flew directly across the muddy pig paddocks, but so speedy was the sheepdog that they arrived at the gate at much the same time. Rory stood on his hind legs to examine its fastening. Then he dropped back down with a growl of disappointment.

"Hopeless!" he said. "There's a special sort of bolt we could never pull back, and worse, it's padlocked."

Damaris ducked under the metal gate, whose bars were too close together to admit more than a pig's snout. She splattered about in the mud, testing it with her bill.

"We don't need to open the gate," she said.

"Oh, look," said Rory, "ducks may fly, but pigs can't. How are they going to get over it?" "Under it," Damaris said.

"They're far too big."

"Not if a hole was dug under the gate," said Damaris. "A great big hole. In this nice soft earth. By you."

Pigs Stopped Play

Very early the following morning, Rory did indeed dig that hole. Then he woke the pigs and said to the boar, very respectfully, "Would you be good enough to follow me, sir?"

At the gate he said, "Be kind enough to put your head under here, sir, and give a heave."

And, as the sows watched, the General put his great head in the hole and gave an almighty heave. Up came the gate, right off its hinges at one end, while at the other end, the bolt bent and the padlock snapped. Then down crashed the whole thing and away down the road went the sows, marching behind their master.

Before long, there were grumblings of discontent in the ranks.

"I'm tired" and "My feet hurt" and "I'm starving hungry" and "I've had about enough of this," the sows complained, and finally the fattest of them, Mrs. Roly-Poly, simply lay down in the road. Firingclose General Lord Nicholas of Winningshot heard the patter of hoofs cease behind him and turned to see that all the sows had stopped.

"What is this?" he grunted. "Is this mutiny?"

"Don't know what the place is called, General," said Mrs. Chubby, "but we're not going any farther, not till we've had a rest and a bite to eat. My trotters are worn out."

This brought from the General a long lecture, very military in tone, on duty and discipline, and for a while the sows lay in the road, not listening to a word but simply resting and catching their breath. But when the boar paused to catch his, Mrs. Tubby said, "Don't forget, General, that an army marches on its stomach."

The General glowered at her. Then it occurred to him that his own stomach was feeling remarkably empty.

"Mrs. Tubby," he said, "you took the words right out of my mouth. I was merely waiting until we found a suitable source of food," and, after a short lecture on the importance of a balanced diet, he set off again, the sows reluctantly following.

Not half a mile on, they came upon an open gateway and, beyond it, a fine crop of sugar beets.

Eagerly the hungry pigs fell upon this bonanza, tearing and swallowing the green leafy tops and ripping great chunks out of the sweet roots in the ground beneath, eating and eating until at last they could hold no more, and even the General was speechless.

They lay in the ruined crop and snored, and none of them saw a brown-and-white duck flying over the sugar-beet field.

"Looks like they've struck it lucky," Damaris told Rory when she arrived back at the farm.

"Took me a bit of time, but when I did find them, they'd gorged themselves in a field of roots and were all lying there, blown out like balloons."

"Good," said Rory. "The happier they are, the less they'll want to come back here. We don't want things to go wrong for them so that they start to wish they were safely back in their old paddock."

But it was not long before things started to go very wrong indeed for the General and his wives.

At first it looked as though he had led them to the promised land, so well did they feed. For a day and a half they stuffed themselves with sugar beets and sugar-beet tops. There was even a pond in the corner of the field, where they could drink and wallow. But then they began to pay the price.

"I don't know why, dear," said Mrs. Portly to Mrs. Stout, "but my guts feel funny."

"Mine too," said Mrs. Stout, and the other sows grunted agreement.

Mrs. O'Bese did not mince her words.

"I've got the trots," she said, and before long they all had, the General included.

"In my opinion," he said uncomfortably, "this unfortunate condition has been caused by an imprudent consumption of the fresh green tops of the sugar beets, acting as a purgative."

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Excerpted from Clever Duck by Dick King-Smith, Nick Bruel. Copyright © 1996 Foxbusters Ltd.. Excerpted by permission of Roaring Brook Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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