where art collides philosoperontap

They looked at each other, with a certain degree of suspicion at first. Neither had expected the other to be there. You know how it goes. One minute you’re walking along minding your own business when bang, it happens.

Sometimes it literally does happen with a bang and you bump into each other. In Stella’s case it was metaphoric bang. She had just been ambling along with her mind somewhere else and had stopped by the river bank. There might have been something that had caught her eye but then again there might not.

Anyway there she was and before she realised it there was the duck. They were looking at each other. They actually stood there for some time before either of them made a move. In this case Stella just said “hello duck”. At first the duck said nothing.

Actually Stella hadn’t expected the duck to answer. She was sure that was normal behaviour for ducks. In fact she was sure that normal behaviour was to fly off rapidly in the opposite direction making lots of duck noises, quacks and so forth.

This duck didn’t fly off though. Stella thought it must be a very brave duck, or a bit stupid perhaps. After a while and after, it seemed, giving careful consideration to Stella’s words the duck replied “how do you do?” When it had spoken there was a mischievous lop sided grin on the duck’s face. It knew that Stella would not have expected it to say anything.

Stella’s first thoughts were that this duck was neither brave nor stupid. This must be a very intelligent duck. As intelligent ducks are prone to do though this one didn’t stick around. It took a couple of waddles, flapped its wings and took off for the water. In a second it had joined some of its pals swimming around in the centre of the stream and very quickly Stella realised that she was no longer sure which duck it had been.

“Wow” thought Stella. From that day on whenever she could Stella would go down to the river bank and take a bag of bread with her to feed the ducks. They always came to her and always seemed grateful for the bread. Sometimes she thought she caught one of them looking into her eye with a bit of a lop sided grin on its face, but she was never quite sure and certainly none of the ducks ever spoke to her again…