“Well, I declare,” exclaimed one old duck as she fell over on her side, “this tub rocks so it made me tumble over, and to save my life I can’t get back on the right rim of this tub. There are two rims and every time I step on one it is not there. What can be the matter? My head feels so dizzy. Does yours?”
“I should think it did! And my ears ring something dreadful!”
“There it is again! To save my life I can’t sit up straight with this tub running around in circles as it does.”
“We better make an extra effort to get out of this tub, for it might be possible that this yellow fluid has affected us.”
“Now you have found the trouble! The stuff we have been drinking is the cause of our dizziness, I am sure of it.”
Just then Shep and the hired man came along the path. Seeing the ducks in the tub, Shep tried to frighten them, but they only quacked and then left their bills stretched open, too crazy-headed to shut them. The more Shep barked at them, the more they quacked and flapped their wings, but they could not get out of the tub. When the hired man reached them, he nearly died laughing at the queer actions of the ducks. He picked them up one after the other and set them on the ground, but then they only made him laugh the more for they stepped so high and waddled along with such a rolling gait, their heads held to one side in such a peculiar manner, he doubled up with mirth.
But this was not all of it. He turned over the tub of cider—there was nothing else to do after the ducks had been in it. But little did he think what a commotion it was going to create among the fowls. When the geese came along on their way to the pond and smelled the cider and saw it running on the ground in little rivulets, they craned their long necks to get a better smell. This second whiff only assured them the liquid was surely made of apples. They began to drink all they could catch in their bills as it ran along the hard-beaten path. Soon they too were lifting their feet so high that their big bodies toppled over and at last they just rolled on the grass, their legs sticking straight up in the air, where they lay hissing until the hired man came and carried them off to the goose house. Before night even the turkeys and chickens had had some of the troublesome cider. In consequence the old turkey gobbler nearly gobbled his head off as he puffed himself out and went strutting uncertainly about the yard. As for the roosters, they crowed and crowed and crowed until they fell off the fence from sheer exhaustion. Really it was as comical a sight as anyone could well imagine to see the fowls reeling and staggering around the barnyard in such a ridiculous manner.
Mr. Watson had several orders for geese, ducks and chickens to be filled the next morning. He generally had a difficult time catching just the ones he wished to sell, but for a wonder to-night he could walk right up to any fowl and pick it up without it so much as lifting a wing in flight or making a single outcry. You see the cider had made them so stupid they were nearly sound asleep.