Duck Amuck

My Dear Princess, Loulou and Fellows,

Today, Caro got to meet Boots. We went over to see Tiger and Loulou for lunch, and Caro made one of her platters. 

A Caro platter is now her signature. 

Joshua was also there, and we had a lovely afternoon sitting in the shade outside Loulou Cottage, with Boots running around, quite the thing and very happy. She is very happy to be handled, but prefers to run up to your shoulder and preen your neck. 

She is VERY busy. A little fidget. She's constantly nibbling at things with her little beak and scratching herself and looking around and stretching out her foot and turning around and worrying at her own baby-feathers with her beak and peep-eep-eeping. 

Here you see her, having run up Caro and happily looking out from her hair. In the extras, you can see her hiding UNDER Caro's hair too, and later on, settled down in Caro's cleavage. Where she did a shit. 

"God's sake," said Caro, fishing around down there with a piece of kitchen roll. "I'll be in there with a loofah later."

Occasionally you could sense Boots was bored. She wanted to be put down so that she could run around in the grass, pecking at the grass and - BUG! BUG! IT'S A BUG OMIGOD!

When she sees a bug she goes SCOOTING after it, and gobbles it down. She is lightning fast. I was very impressed. I have about half a dozen sandfly welts on my arms and feet at present, so I'd quite like to employ her as a duck. 

She's also pretty fast when Loulou walks around. She goes RUNNING after Loulou, tripping over her own webby feet and flapping her stubby wings. It is really very sweet. 

We did have to keep an eye on her though. There was an errant chicken, buck-buck-buckaw-ing around. We didn't know that the chicken had EVIL intent for Boots, but we didn't know that she DIDN'T either. And with Boots, we take no chances. 

"Watch the duck," said Loulou, when she went for a nap. 

There was also a little dog called Mads, who came to visit from the neighbour's place. She also seemed friendly, but then I've seen what Murphy Dog does to toy ducks and it didn't bear thinking about. 

Loulou is still recovering from her op, but Boots is her "therapy duck". I told her about Michael Leunig and his direction finding duck. I can't help but feel that Loulou would be happy in Curly Flats. 

S.