“It’s Doctor Muskrat. Who are you, and whatever were you doing?”
Didn’t those ducks just blink their yellow eyes when that brown, furry beast answered them back in their own language? He’d learned it from the mallards who visit his pond.
“We’re the jolly old waddle ducks,” quacked the one they called Flapper. “We’re playing a game of fish the puddle. Since you can talk duck talk so well, you might as well come along and learn it. It’s lots of fun. Come on!”
“Come along,” teased another. “We’ll show you all the ponds—lots of them are deep enough to swim in now. We’ll show you where the apples have dropped in the orchard, and where the garden snails have hidden, and the leak in the corn crib where the grains fall through——”
“Quawk! There isn’t much about this place we don’t get a beak into. We even pick over the pigs’ pail before they ever see it. Just now we got a drink of the warm milk they feed the calf. Ho! but this is a fine place to live!” laughed the third, his fat body shaking and the little curly feathers sticking up so cheerfully in his tail.
“Do you live here always?” asked Doctor Muskrat in surprise. “Don’t you ever fly away?” All the ducks he knew flew south for the winter.
“We’re not wild ducks,” Flapper explained. “We’re tame. We hear great tales from the wild ones. Some of them stop in and have a feed with us most every season. Great tales! That must be a gay life. But we’re so fat we can’t keep up with them.” He sighed, but he blinked so mischievously Doctor Muskrat could see he wasn’t breaking his heart about it.
“You’re just as well off,” said Doctor Muskrat. “White birds are so easy to see somebody always catches them.”
“Are you wild yourself?” they asked curiously. “Tell us what it’s like.”
So Doctor Muskrat strolled along with them, and fine friends they were, I can tell you, always happy and good-natured. They made the old doctor feel almost as much at home as he did in his own pond.