The Twenty Sixth Story

I guess this will be the pattern. I'll forget to check google+ for weeks (months) at a time, but when I remember, I'll post a new story almost everyday. Then I'll forget again.
This is the story of the duck who couldn't swim. It is from when I was VERY young; probably first grade, maybe second. My brother and I both weren't going to school at the time, and in between lessons, mom would take us down to the park. There were lots of ducks at the park, and I would run around like a mad thing trying to pet all the ducklings. There would often be one female duck with ridiculous numbers of ducklings. Presumably, none of the ducks counted their fluffballs, and when a fluffball saw a bunch of other fluffballs it figured that was were it was supposed to go. There was a downside to this, though. Ducklings don't produce oils of their own- the mother duck preens her chicks and imparts waterproofing when she does. With that many chicks, she can't preen them all. My brother and I found ourselves standing on shore, watching a duckling sink. We had no idea WHY the duckling was sinking, we only knew that it was. We called mom over, pointing at the floundering duckling; being who she is, without even stopping she walked right into the pond in the middle of the park, swam out to the duckling, and brought him back to shore. She didn't know why he couldn't swim, either. We let him rest and then put him back in the shallows, keeping a close eye. He clearly wasn't gonna make it, so we brought him home. Our cat had kittens at the time, and the little duckling did his best to keep up with them (after all, they were also fluffballs, maybe they were just really strange ducklings?). Mom, of course, was calling around trying to figure out what to do with a stray duck. Eventually she found a bird rehab place, where we continued to volunteer one day week until re-enrolling in actual school.