Spring Fever

It has to be the official beginning of spring, because our small town is boasting it’s first duckling.

We have several small streams and rivers running through the valley from the hills. The one that meanders past our post office, has a tribe of mallard on it. The nesting rights for the mound in the centre of the stream go out to tender each year. This year the proud parents with the “Licence To Hatch” have a solitary ball of fluff sitting between them. If they had been Mandarin Ducks, I would have suspected a “One Egg Policy”.

In a few weeks, we will have cars screeching to a halt all over the town. Mother ducks tend to be a proud lot and take their progeny for walks across the Rugby pitch to the Fire Station, from the Swimming Baths to the secondary school and have been known to park themselves on the lawn outside one of the churches. As it sits on a busy roundabout, their quacking tends to go unnoticed, unless it is on a Sunday during prayers. Then parishioners can honestly sing about “All creatures great and small”