Isn’t the Dog & Duck a pub?

Following his display of devotion to me when his owners returned home, Dick van Duck – the name stuck – has come to live with us.

The idea is that if he is a girl, he will return to join the flock and lay eggs, do general duck stuff and have a long and happy life. If he turns out to be a boy, well … we are avoiding mentions of pancakes and plum sauce!

I suspect, the plans may not quite come to fruition, and that Dick and Poppy will become such firm friends that we shall have to adopt him and compensate his owners suitably for the loss of a lifetime of eggs, or a lunchtime of duck.

We received a text last night, saying that a second egg had hatched. The new arrival has been dubbed Duck Martin, and seems to be making good progress toward making his owners fall in love with him. I have my suspicions that none of the current batch will ever get anywhere near being eaten.

Comparing notes, we are finding that these tiny balls of fluff are very good indeed at making sure that they have their every need immediately met. Dick is not the only one who squeaks frantically every time he is left on his own. However, Martin has not yet started throwing himself at the bars of his cage. I think he may be a slower developer than my baby, but I don’t like to say anything.

This morning, we really did not want to lug the cumbersome cage upstairs while we had breakfast. However, Dick squeals non-stop if I am out of his sight, so we lined the laundry basket with an old towel, and put him in it, along with his tiny Moroccan cruet filled with food and drinking water and a larger plastic tub for paddling purposes. He chomped and paddled happily while we ate breakfast on the roof terrace, the basket taking up most of the table.

Clearly, when we go out, we shall not be able to take a laundry basket with us. Having seen celebrities carrying tiny rat dogs around in handbags, I decided to investigate. Not only were the dog carriers expensive, but they also were not nearly attractive enough for a duck of Dick’s calibre. There was nothing for it, but to cook something up for him myself. (Unfortunate choice of phrase, but he is asleep, so I got away with it.)

Good choice, Dick!

I don’t want people thinking I am mad -obviously! – so the bag has to be discreet. I shall have to face the critics soon enough, when we buy him a harness and he joins us on family walks. Dick helped me select a suitable colour ball of wool from my stash in the spare bedroom, and seemed to approve when I found some old scraps of purple fleece fabric left over from my marsupial monk, the innards of a Tupperware box and a couple of micro fibre cloths.

Helping, duck style

I had thought Poppy’s skills as a supervisor and helper were about as good as it was possible to get. Dick brings new dimensions to helpfulness and supervision. He tried to chew the wool, attacked the crochet hook, scuttled about and generally got in the way while I concocted. Fortunately, the lure of food in the laundry basket was enough to keep him happy for a little while, and he dozed off a couple of times, allowing me to get on with what I was trying to do.

I had the bright idea of making a little window in one end of the bag, so that he could poke his head out in an endearing fashion. After much faffing, I had a lovely little porthole, cunningly made so that unpicking a row or two would enlarge the hole to fit him as he got bigger. Unfortunately, he refused to use it, preferring to crane his neck up and try to poke his beak through any of the far smaller holes in the fabric of the crochet.

Nobody would ever guess what it contains, surely!

While he stuffed his face again (it had been about ten minutes since the previous snack) I undid the porthole, and reworked the end of the bag. The Tupperware innards fitted snugly into a cover made of one of the cloths, and I hemmed the fleece scrap into a rather odd, but snuggly shape and put it in the bag. A crocheted flower and some silky ribbon straps completed the job.

A brief appearance

After a brief and very successful swimming lesson in the washbasin, we patted Dick dry and put him in the re-worked bag. He showed his approval by attacking the zip, and having to be tempted with food to get him to put his head through the new flap arrangement. He gobbled a little of the food we offered, but seemed very keen to return to whatever it was he was doing inside the bag.  When I peered through the hole, he was snuggled up to the piece of fleece, and his eyes were starting to close.

Comfortably snuggled up with his piece of fleece

Of course, he woke up immediately I opened the zip to take a picture, but I think it is safe to say that he likes his nice new bag. He may be seen at a bar somewhere near here very soon, poking his head out of the flap, and drawing attention to the fact that I am daft enough to carry a duckling about in a purple crocheted bag.