The Comeback Kid

They say that things happen in threes. There was Donald Duck, Howard The Duck [the Marvel Comics character of the 1970s – see his Wikipedia entry – HERE] … and now there’s Sandy The Duck, a pure-bred white Indian Runner, albeit that at this stage he’s a bright yellow in the style of the ubiquitous bath-time plastic variety.

Today’s tale is of a love of living things and a young animal’s fighting spirit in his unequal struggle for survival.

Staying on a farm in the country over the Bank Holiday I became indirectly involved in a new-born duckling’s unpromising start to life.

Our hostess doesn’t breed ducks per se but, as a farming side-line operates a staging post operation for new arrivals in this world on their way either to life as a pet on somebody’s pond or lake or sometimes a breeding/farming existence.

By use of an egg incubator, a ‘brooding machine’ and a broody old hen, she hosts fertilised duck eggs to their ‘break-out’ and then through their first few weeks of life.

Sometime ago the Memsahib offered to help with looking after these youngsters whenever we visited. A fervent animal-lover, this gave her a renewed sense of purpose – the last of her two dogs having passed on almost two years ago now.

So far, so good.

Last Saturday, the day after we arrived to stay, there was some excitement over at the duck factory [as I call it]. Eight or nine duckings were due to emerge from their eggs imminently.

I was otherwise engaged all weekend but on Sunday morning – having rushed over to find out how the expected new arrivals were doing – The Boss returned with a tiny little bundle of fluff.

I’m not well up on farming terms or concepts. All I know about such things comes to me in easily-digestible bite-sized chunks as I flick through the newspapers of a Sunday evening as Countryfile is being broadcast on BBC1.

Some might say that this bundle of fluff was the ‘runt of the litter’ [or is that a term reserved for cats?]. He’d had a hard time breaking out of his capsule, allegedly because one of the staff had failed to hydrate the eggs properly and thus the shells had become very hard.

Being “a wrong ‘un’” [in farming terms, a potential ‘dud’] he – or is it a she? – had been left in the brood machine overnight on the same basis that the Spartans used to decide the fate of weak babies, viz. leaving them on the mountainside for 24 hours – after which they’d either be dead or, if they’d proved they had the spirit in them and were still alive, they’d be taken back and nurtured.

Our little hero had what I’d describe as a ‘lolling head’. Probably damaged by being compressed too long inside his egg, it had failed to develop correctly – or had otherwise been rendered seriously ‘not normal’ … and he’d been identified by our hostess as a candidate for the ‘Spartan test’.

Which by Sunday morning he had survived.

It was when – despite this feat – our hostess nevertheless announced that sadly ‘Donald’ would not long for this world in any event (a farmer’s decision, i.e. a hard-nosed, but in that world perfectly understandable, one) that the Boss stepped in and said she would do what she could for him, whether or not he survived only a few hours or – if by any chance he responded to some TLC – maybe, just maybe, he’d have a chance.

Dear reader, the above explains why as I type said little tyke is fast asleep, clutched to The Boss’s ample bosom in my front room.

He travelled back to Harrow with us on Sunday afternoon and, having been fed scrambled eggs, some sort of starter duck-feed and drinks of water at regular intervals, at some point in the early evening – having previously wrapped in a towel, being cared for and needing constant support behind his head to stop it lolling off sideways and unbalancing him – I heard a shriek from the garden terrace.

The Memsahib was announcing that he’d suddenly stood bolt upright, head at first – only for a few seconds at a time – being carried where it should be before then ‘falling off’ again … but within half an hour, with copious encouragement, he was seemingly as right as rain. Certainly as far as I could judge far better off than he had been.

There have been plenty of laughs and joys along the way. My favourite was mid-morning yesterday when I asked what we potentially had in stock for an evening meal. Without thinking The Boss responded “Well, we could always have the Gressingham duck breasts we bought on Friday …” before – grasping the context – she recoiled in horror as she realised what she had said in front our little bundle of fluff!

Yesterday ‘Sandy’ [short for ‘Alexander’, as in ‘Alexander The Great’] – my suggested name ‘Donald’ having been rejected by The Boss on the grounds it might be taken to refer to the US President – made huge strides, Literally. He now eats heartily every hour, drinks like Oliver Reed and scuttles across the garden lawn like a battery-powered toy on steroids having (as several people had warned us would happen) clearly imprinted upon the first thing he saw once his little brain could register anything at all.

In our case, The Boss’s bosom.

Accordingly, yesterday chez nous was spent totally Sandy-dedicated. Mid-afternoon, wide-eyed and playing to the gallery, he attended his first-ever outdoor pop concert at a pub on the river – this featuring a band the keyboard player of which is an old mate of ours.

Last night, reduced as per usual to weariness by about 8.00pm, and with the Boss set upon another overnight on the sofa tending to her little charge, I retired to bed.

It’s extraordinary how a tiny duckling, still less than 72 hours old, can become a welcome fixture in your life. The difficult part will come next weekend, when at some point we return to the farm to see how and if Sandy manages to re-integrate with his siblings, only four of which (including him) have survived this far.

That’s why ducks have multiple offspring – you need to when fewer than 50% are going to survive more than a week due to random factors including predators.