February 2021 Flash Lit 4 - If It Quacks Like a Duck (and yes, the picture is a chicken)

It was high time to go, for the pool was getting quite crowded with the birds and animals that had fallen into it: there were a Duck and a Dodo, a Lory and an Eaglet, and several other curious creatures. Alice led the way, and the whole party swam to the shore.  Alice in Wonderland, Chapter 2

 

 

 

Butterfly trudged into the nature center at Tilden.  She had what she was sure were two truly disgusting and painful blisters on her heels, her arms were sunburned, and she needed to pee.  There was nothing to do about the sunburn except make yet another promise to herself that she would remember to keep the sunscreen in the car, but in the bathroom, she took care of one of the other problems.  Then she begged a couple of bandages from the helpful person behind the counter, plopped down on a bench and unceremoniously stripped off her red high tops and her purple socks to survey the damage.  A toddler who had temporarily escaped from her nanny while her baby sibling was fussing came to investigate.

 

“Owie,” the child said knowledgeably.

 

“Yes,” Butterfly agreed, sticking one bandaid firmly over the angry red rupture on her left heel.  Maybe she should get actual hiking boots, she thought.

 

The little girl leaned toward Butterfly’s foot and kissed the air over it.  “Better.”  Her curls were ridiculously blond and light, like dandelion fluff.

 

“Marisol!” the nanny cried, “Where are you?  Want to see the animals?”

 

“Duck,” Marisol said and plunged, like an avalanche, toward the door.

 

Butterfly did feel better.  In fact, maybe she would recover from her too-hot, too-long, too-steep, accidental trek of doom by looking at the creatures next door at the Little Farm.  Herds of small children roamed outside the fences, so the animals were safe, at least. 

 

A naturalist was talking to a group of kindergarteners next to one pen.  “We have a visitor here at the Little Farm,” he said.  “Who knows what kind of animal this is?”

 

A forest of hands sprung up.  “Yes?” the naturalist said to one child in a grubby and obviously much-loved tractor t-shirt.

 

“Is your Mama a llama?” the boy shouted.

 

“Very good!” the naturalist answered.  “This is Amy the llama, visiting us for a week or so.”

 

Amy, rock star status assured, did not pander to her fans.  She stared at them aloofly until the naturalist said, “And now who wants to give Amy some celery?”  That made her smile delicately and accept offerings with a bat of her long eyelashes.

 

Butterfly gingerly tested out the bandages on her heels as she strolled past the sheep and the cows, surveyed rabbits in the dusky dust of the barn, and paused again outside the pen where the chickens and ducks had an uneasy truce between those in favor of water all over and those opposed.

 

The bandages were holding and Butterfly sent up a tiny grateful prayer.

 

“Quack,” a duck remarked.