LITTLE WHITE DUCK

Christmas Day at the Delta Ponds

I hear them and quack my response from the path. They float to the pond edge: a small white duck surrounded by mallards. They follow the little white duck who waddles toward me on a well-worn duck trail up from the pond. They peck at its tailfeathers.

It stops in the middle of the trail just feet from me.

I scold the others. Duck discrimination, I say. Fowl prejudice!

They turn, wobble back to the water – all but the hefty hen, the lead bully. She eyes me, assesses my reach. In slow, matronly steps she descends toward the pond. The little white duck follows.

Near the water, a male emerges from grassy hiding. An ambush? Then he, too, scuttles to the water.

This little white duck will never grow up like the Ugly Duckling – no swan in this one’s DNA. It huddles by the reeds until the mallard flotilla drifts off.

white feathers
orange beak
sail away safe