Argh!! The evil monkey, even in aching convalescence, deigns to torment my deeply depressed duck with the garish portrait of a gobblering neotropical gamebird, wattles and all!
How does the sickly simian know that these big, bamboozling birds have been scaring the blubbering beejezus out of my duck since the days when he was a mere bite-sized babe in the bush? Back when the land behind my grandma's house was all grass and shrub (now it's all tar and trash), stray turkeys would come close to the back door when my wee duck peered out for a sunny pee, hoping perhaps for a pick at his pecker.
A little later, another neighbour also found pleasure in permitting his poultry to pout freely around the block. His finicky flock of toms would boldly trot on the road, blocking the passage of my huffing duck by puffing themselves up into feathery bombs of brazenness, with snoods swinging from their bills like deflated ducks in a turkey's trophy room.
Such shocking encounters have kept my duck out of barnyards for fear of gobblers in the grain and probably account for his present bashfulness, which results in blush rather than brandish at the first sight of clucking ladybirds. And I am eternally grateful that gardens in these parts do not suffer the invasions of rejected toms wild with desire and desperate for a consolatory duck. And it's probably a blessing too that ol' Ben's notion of adopting this ravager of redcoats as the emblem of a young state of liberty came to naught. Imagine Armstrong announcing to Houston, "The Turkey has landed!"
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