The duck with the twisted up leg reminds of Gimpy, the lame duck we often fed at the Snug Harbor pond. She was a clever bird who learned to use her deformed leg as a rudder, enabling her to swim faster and make sharper turns than the other ducks. When we threw the food in her direction, she snapped it up and quickly paddled away before her feathered peers could nip her tail. The ducks had a bad habit of doing that to the grabber of the food, but gimpy always escaped them. During those couple of years when we fed her, we both had grown fond of Gimpy. The last time we saw her, she was sitting with a handsome mallard, apparently her mate.
Comments (3)
See all