A Duckling Called Button

by Helen Peters

  Suddenly, the egg wobbled violently. The top lifted off and the little wet face of a tiny duckling appeared. Its shiny round black eyes looked straight at Jasmine.

  “Hello, little duckling,” Jasmine whispered. “Welcome to the world.”

  For my sister Mary

  H. P.

  For my mum, who taught me to fly

  E. S.

  Put That Down!

  “Good girl, Truffle,” said Jasmine, bending down to scratch her pig behind the ears. “Good girl.”

  Jasmine and her best friend Tom were walking Truffle around the edge of the biggest field on Oak Tree Farm, checking Jasmine’s dad’s flock of Southdown sheep. It was a lovely warm March morning. The sky was a beautiful pale blue, with high fluffy clouds.

  The sheep were due to lamb next month and they had to be checked twice a day to make sure they were all right. Jasmine always took Truffle with her on these walks. She had rescued the pig from another farm, as a tiny newborn runt, and nursed her back to health. Now four months old, Truffle lived happily in the orchard next to the farmhouse, but she loved to go for walks with Jasmine.

  “That sheep’s stuck,” said Tom, pointing towards the bottom of the field. A ewe lay upside down, arching her back and kicking her legs in the air, trying to get on to her feet.

  The children walked quickly towards the sheep, Truffle trotting beside them.

  “She must have rolled over to rub an itchy patch,” said Jasmine. “She’s too heavy in lamb to get up again, poor thing.”

  When they reached the stuck sheep, Jasmine said, “Sit, Truffle.” Truffle sat obediently while Jasmine and Tom crouched beside the ewe.

  “Let’s get you back on your feet,” Jasmine said. “We don’t want a fox or a badger attacking you, do we?”

  They placed their hands under the ewe’s side and heaved her up. She scrambled to her feet and trotted off without a backward glance. Jasmine watched her happily. But Tom was frowning.

  “There’s a dog over there. Down by the river.”

  The far side of the meadow bordered the river. Trees and bushes grew on the banks. Some of the sheep had been grazing peacefully over there, but now they started running across the field, baaing in panic.

  Jasmine saw a flash of brown amongst the bushes.

  “Off the lead, in a field full of sheep,” she said. “It must be a stray. You run and get my dad. I’ll stay here to chase it away if it tries to attack the ewes.”

  “Ugh,” said Tom. “Look. I bet it’s hers.”

  A girl in purple wellington boots and a black coat with a fur-trimmed hood was walking along the public footpath that ran across the fields by the river. Somebody Jasmine and Tom knew all too well. Bella Bradley, the most annoying girl in their class.

  Fury surged through Jasmine. She grabbed Truffle’s lead and marched over to the girl.

  “Bella Bradley! Is that your dog?”

  Bella barely glanced at Jasmine. “Duh,” she said. “Who else’s dog would it be? I can’t see anyone else around here.”

  “Well, you need to put it on a lead.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because these sheep are all in lamb. If your dog chases them, they could lose their lambs.”

  “My dog doesn’t chase sheep. And you can’t tell me what to do.”

  She strode off across the field.

  Jasmine, boiling with rage, was about to retort when a tremendous squawking and beating of wings came from the direction of the river.

  She turned to see what was going on.

  Bella’s terrier shot out from the bushes. In its mouth was a duck, flapping its wings and quacking madly.

  “Hey!” shouted Jasmine. “Put that down!”

  She and Tom raced across the field after the dog, the duck clamped in its jaws. Tom picked up a clod of earth and hurled it at the terrier, but it missed.

  When it reached the hedge, the dog dropped the duck and squeezed into the hedgerow. Jasmine and Tom fell to their knees beside the duck. It was a female mallard. Jasmine placed her hands on the soft warm underbody.

  There was no movement beneath her feathers.

  No heartbeat.

  “She’s dead,” said Jasmine. “That dog killed her.”

  What If She Was Nesting?

  Tom sprang to his feet. Jasmine had never seen him look so angry.

  “Hey!” he yelled.

  Bella carried on walking. “Rupert!” she called. “Rupert, come here!”

  “Rupert?” scoffed Tom. “Stupid name for a dog.”

  Jasmine got to her feet, cradling the duck in her arms. She and Tom ran across the field, stumbling over the rutted ground, Truffle trotting beside them.

  “Hey!” shouted Tom again.

  The dog still hadn’t appeared, so Bella had to slow down. Tom and Jasmine caught up with her.

  “Your dog,” said Jasmine, standing in Bella’s path, “just killed this duck.”

  Bella looked scornfully at the mallard’s body.

  “So?” she said. “It’s just a duck. They’re not exactly rare.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?” said Jasmine. “What if she was nesting?”

  “So what?” said Bella. She rounded on Tom. “Stop taking photos! Don’t you know it’s rude to take pictures without permission?”

  “Don’t you know it’s rude to kill an animal without permission?” said Tom, pointing his phone at her face and clicking another shot.

  “We’ll report you,” said Jasmine. “You won’t get away with this.”

  “Oh, no,” said Bella, with an exaggerated fake shudder. “I’m so scared.”

  She gave them a contemptuous look and walked off. The terrier squeezed out of the hedge and bounded over to her. Tom took several pictures of it.

  “I hate her so much,” said Jasmine.

  “At least we can report her to the police,” said Tom. “That’ll give her a shock.” He put the phone back in his pocket and stroked the duck. “Poor thing.”

  “We need to search the riverbank,” said Jasmine. “In case she had a nest.”

  “Maybe there’ll be ducklings,” said Tom. “We could take them home and look after them.”

  “I think it’s too early for ducklings,” said Jasmine. “More likely to be eggs.”

  Tom’s face lit up. “If it’s eggs,” he said, “we could put them in an incubator and hatch them.”

  Jasmine frowned. “I don’t think we’ve got an incubator.”

  “Angela has,” said Tom. “You know, my aunty. She hatches hens’ eggs sometimes. I don’t think that she’s using it at the moment. I bet she’d lend it to us.”

  “We’ll need to find the eggs quickly,” said Jasmine, “if we’re going to save them. If they go cold, they won’t hatch.”

  They were nearly at the riverbank. Jasmine stopped and scanned the bushes.

  “Was it here where the dog came out?”

  Tom screwed up his face in thought. “I’m not sure.”

  “I think it was somewhere around here.”

  Tom bent down and picked up two small brown feathers and a piece of white fluff.

  “Duck down and feathers,” said Jasmine. “So it must have been around here.”

  They pushed their way through the bushes, following a trail of feathers, until they were almost at the river.

  Then Jasmine saw it.

  “Look!”

  It sat in a hollow between the roots of a tree. One side had been destroyed, but what remained was half of the most beautiful nest Jasmine had ever seen. It was made from leaves and grasses and lined with soft, fluffy duck down. On the downy lining nestled four perfect, pale green eggs.

  Jasmine bent down and felt an egg. “They’re still
warm.”

  “Look at that,” said Tom, pointing down to the riverbank. A mess of smashed eggs lay on the ground. “The dog must have kicked them out of the nest.”

  Jasmine held the dead duck closer to her. Like all female mallards, her feathers were mostly shades of brown, with one beautiful inky-blue feather on her wing. “Poor, poor thing. All that work for nothing. They pluck the down from their own breasts to make that soft lining for the eggs.”

  “But it won’t be for nothing, will it?” said Tom. “There’s still four eggs. And we can hatch them in the incubator.”

  “If they’re fertile,” said Jasmine.

  She handed the duck to Tom and scrambled down the riverbank, holding on to branches and tufts of grass to stop herself from slipping into the water.

  “What are you doing?” called Tom.

  “Seeing if they’re fertile.”

  She reached the smashed eggs. Holding on to a low branch with one hand, she crouched down to inspect the yolks. Two were broken, but the other three were still intact. In the centre of each was a little patch of red, with spidery veins coming out from it.

  Jasmine turned to Tom. “They are fertile. If we get them into an incubator quickly, we could save them!”

  “I’ll phone Angela now,” said Tom, “and see if she’ll lend us her incubator.” He took his phone from his pocket.

  “Ask her if she can come over straightaway,” said Jasmine. “Tell her it’s an emergency.”

  She put an egg in each of her pockets and held out the other two to Tom. “Put these in your pockets. We need to keep them warm, or the ducklings won’t hatch.”

  I’ll Call the Rescue Centre

  It was while they were walking slowly back across the field with the eggs in their pockets that the tricky issue of parenthood occurred to Jasmine.

  “You know ducklings become attached to the first moving thing they see?” she said.

  “Do they?”

  “It’s called imprinting. I read about it. Usually it’s their mum, obviously, but these ducklings don’t have a mum. So they’ll imprint on you or me, depending on which one of us they see first. So … who’s going to have the incubator in their house?”

  She paused and looked at Tom. “It should be you, really. It’s your aunty who’s lending us the incubator.”

  “Yes, but the eggs were on your farm.”

  “True. But they’d die without the incubator.”

  They walked on in silence for a minute. Then Tom said, “My mum would never let me have them. It took years to persuade her to let me have the guinea pigs. And our garden’s tiny. They’d have a better life here.”

  Jasmine felt excitement surging through her. “Are you sure?”

  “And your mum’s a vet, so she’ll know what to do if they get ill.”

  Jasmine felt a rush of gratitude towards her friend. “You can come up every day,” she said, “and help look after them. They’ll be ours jointly.”

  “Except they’d better imprint on you,” said Tom. “Else they’ll be following me home all the time.”

  When they reached the farmyard, Jasmine took Truffle back to the orchard before they went into the house by the front door, pulling off their wellington boots in the porch.

  “Jas, is that you?” called her mum. “Where have you been all this time?”

  She came into the hall and her eyes fell upon the dead duck in Jasmine’s arms. “Oh, my goodness, what happened?”

  Jasmine’s words poured out in a torrent. “Oh, Mum, that horrible Bella Bradley from our class had her dog loose in the sheep field and we told her to put it on a lead but she refused, and he took this poor duck off her nest and killed her and we went and found the nest, and look.”

  She laid the dead duck on the hall table. Mum opened her mouth to protest and then shut it again. From each of her coat pockets Jasmine took a beautiful pale green egg.

  “There’s four of them. Tom’s got the others. There were five more, but the dog broke them. And Mum, they’re fertile! So we need to get them into an incubator quickly.”

  “OK, Jasmine,” said Mum, “calm down a minute. Come into the kitchen and we’ll have a think. And let’s get that dead duck off the table.”

  “Don’t take her away. We’re going to have a proper funeral and bury her in the garden, next to Blossom.”

  Blossom was Jasmine’s pet hen. She had been killed by a fox last winter. The memory of it was still unbearably sad for Jasmine.

  Mum was rummaging in the hall cupboard. “I’ll put her in this shoebox for now. We need to think what to do about the eggs.”

  “They’re still warm,” said Jasmine, “but they’ll need to go in an incubator soon, won’t they?”

  “It depends whether the duck had started incubating them yet. Was it just a red spot you saw, or was there any veining?”

  “There were little spidery lines coming out of the spot.”

  “So she had started sitting. The ducklings are already growing. I’ll phone the wildlife rescue centre and we’ll take them straight over there.”

  Jasmine looked at her in horror. “You can’t take them away! They’re ours.”

  “This is a specialist job, Jasmine. The wildlife rehabilitators do this kind of thing all the time and they’re very good. And anyway, we don’t have an incubator.”

  Jasmine glanced at Tom. “What if we did? Would you let us keep them?”

  “Well, we haven’t, so there’s no point discussing it. I’ll phone them now.”

  Tom opened his mouth, but Jasmine shook her head at him.

  “Why didn’t you tell her we’ve got an incubator coming?” Tom whispered, as they followed Mum to the kitchen.

  “Because she might phone Angela and tell her not to bring it.”

  “But what if she takes the eggs away before Angela gets here?”

  “We won’t let her.”

  Jasmine’s father was sitting at the kitchen table, eating a sandwich. Her fifteen-year-old sister, Ella, and five-year-old brother, Manu, were also having lunch. Ella was reading a book propped open on the table in front of her.

  Dad raised his eyebrows when he saw the eggs.

  “Where did you get those from?”

  Jasmine and Tom told him. When they had finished, Dad looked thoughtful.

  “This girl is in your class, did you say?”

  He asked them for her name and address and typed them into his phone.

  “Mallards and their nests are protected by law,” he said. “It’s an offence to damage or destroy them intentionally. And it’s also an offence for a dog to be at large in a field of sheep. I’d have been within my rights to shoot it, if I’d seen it.”

  “I wouldn’t want it shot,” said Jasmine. “It’s Bella’s fault, not the dog’s.”

  “It’s the dog that could worry the sheep, though, and the dog that killed that duck.” He stood up. “I’ll get straight on to the police.”

  “And I’ll call the rescue centre,” said Mum, “and let them know to expect a clutch of duck eggs in the next half hour.”

  Jasmine and Tom looked at each other in alarm.

  “You don’t have to phone them yet, do you?” asked Jasmine. “Why don’t you wait for a bit?”

  Please come soon, Angela, she thought. What was taking her so long?

  “You said yourself, Jasmine, it’s vital to get the eggs in an incubator as soon as possible,” said Mum. “The sooner I take them to the rescue centre, the better.”

  Give Me That Egg

  “Should we put the eggs in the Aga?” Jasmine asked her mother. “Just in the warming oven?”

  Anything to stop her from making that phone call.

  Mum shook her head. “No, they might overheat, and that would kill the embryos. What you’re doing right now – holding them in your hands – is the best thing. The warmth from your hands is probably about the same temperature as their mother’s body. And—”

  She was interrupted by a series of long, insistent
rings on the doorbell that could only have come from one person.

  Manu jumped up from his chair. His best friend, Ben, lived in the house at the end of the farm road. Like Tom, he spent as much of his time at the farm as he possibly could. And he always signalled his arrival in the same way.

  “You finish your lunch, Manu,” said Mum. “I’ll let Ben in.”

  “But I’ve finished.”

  “You certainly have not. You need to eat those vegetables before you leave the table.”

  She left the room.

  “I need the toilet,” said Tom. “Where shall I put the eggs?”

  Ella looked up from her book. “I’ll hold them,” she said.

  “Thanks, Ella,” said Jasmine, amazed. Her sister was usually too absorbed in reading or studying to think about anything else.

  “It’s fine. I can read while I’m holding them. Give them here, Tom.”

  “Be really careful,” said Jasmine. “If they crack, they won’t hatch.”

  As Ella sat back down with an egg in each hand, Mum brought Ben into the kitchen.

  “Take a seat, Ben,” she said. “Manu’s just finishing his lunch.”

  “Thank you, Nadia,” said Ben, sitting in the chair opposite Manu.

  Ben was always extremely polite to adults. That was how he got away with being so naughty.

  “I’m glad you’re better,” said Mum. “It can’t have been fun, having pneumonia. Especially having to stay in hospital.”

  Ben’s eyes lit up. “Hospital was so fun. I had this really cool bed with a button you could press to make it go up and down. Only I pressed it so much the button broke. But then a man came and fixed it. And I had my own telly on the wall and I could watch it all day long.”

  Mum smiled. “Oh, well, that’s great that you liked it.”

  “The only thing I didn’t like was when my sister came to visit.”

  “Why, what did she do?”

  “She blocked my view of the telly.”