Lord Love A Duck

My Dear Princess, Loulou and Fellows,

Today I got a text from Loulou which read thus:

Hello! I'm hanging out in the caravan with Duckie for an hour or so if you want to meet him/her

Well, what could I say! It was shoes on and straight round there as fast as I could. 

I just got there when I received a second text:

We are in the caravan watching videos

This intrigued me. What sort of videos do ducks like to watch?

Loulou told me it was a knitting video, although they had been watching videos of ducks earlier in order to teach Boots the Duckling to learn how to quack. 

Right now she* tweets. All the time. I did not know this. But Loulou explained that it's to stay in contact with Mummy Duck and since this little thing has bonded to people, she constantly twitters and tweets and peeps and eeps. 

Loulou asked if I would like to hold her. A silly question.

She was, as you might expect, as light as a ball of cotton wool, with those dear little feet in my hand. I could feel her bill - kind of like the end of a pen against my hand and she scratched herself with her back foot and looked very pleased with herself.

Boots, not Loulou. 

She sat comfortably on my stomach and was just as cute as can be.

Oh, sorry, I mis-typed that. 

She SHAT comfortably on my stomach and was just as cute as can be.

"Oh sorry!" said Loulou, although why she was apologising for something Boots did, I don't know. Loulou very kindly got some kitchen roll and wiped it up because I was going nowhere. I had a duck and was covered in poo and was very happy about it. 

Boots likes to sit up high near your neck. I did not know this, but she scampered up to my shoulder and settled down. "Eep-eep-tweet-peep-eep-eep," she whispered in my ear.

I could feel her settling in, with her bill resting against my neck.

"Oh that's so cute!" said Loulou, "she's doing that thing where she tucks her bill under her wing. Oh, she's stopped doing it now."

Still for a moment, Loulou and I were like proud parents.

We discussed duck maintenance for a while, and then we put Boots on the floor to have her lunch. She's a funny eater. She just sort of runs around worrying at very small bits of fruit and veg with her beak. And sometimes they disappeared and sometimes they just moved about. It was like her beak was a very small, but a bit crap, hoover.

But she also had a bowl of cat biscuits in water which she appears to love. Her beak went in there too and splashed about while she peeped happily. 

Loulou brought in a small bowl of rainwater from outside, with some earth mixed into it, to simulate the world's smallest and cutest pond. This was a previously-untried experiment. 

Boots LOVED it! She didn't swim exactly but she waded around and around excitedly in circles eep-ing and bill-ing and stomping in a state of extreme happiness. 

"Have you had enough? For a duck you don't seem to like being wet," asked Loulou. 

Boots confirmed she had indeed had enough by LEAPING out of the bowl right onto a piece of kitchen roll. It was the perfect jump!

Again. We were both delighted. "She couldn't even get out of the bowl the other day!" said Loulou. "Aren't you clever!" And then Loulou swept up Boots and gave her a cuddle. 

I decided to leave at this point. I didn't want to dominate Loulou's time with her little friend. Loulou explained how she had raised a blackbird chick once and how much she loved it, and how hard it was to let it go when the blackbird was old enough. 

Little duckie is getting her real feathers through now. She won't be a little duckie for much longer. "She might be an arsehole drake," said Loulou. "We just don't know."

So I wanted to make sure Loulou has maximum time with her little fuzzy friend. However, I really loved my hour with Boots. And thank you Loulou, that was an hour I'll never forget.

S.

* I decided she was a non-binary duck with preferred she/her pronouns.