THE PERFECT GENTLEMAN

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 87, 9 October 1937, Page 27

THE PERFECT GENTLEMAN

Why the drake has never been used as the type of a perfect gentleman, I can't understand, said Miss L. F. Ramsay, in a 8.8.C. talk. He never dips his beak into the food bowl till all his wives have eaten. He would rather starve than be so ungentlemanly. He will protect his ladies against terrible odds, if a dog attacks, for instance. I remember that happening once when our brood was on the way home to supper. They all vanished and, though we hunted till dark, we couldn't' find them. Then, at midnight, the voice of the drake was heard under the bedroom windows. He had brought all his wives home safely. Ducks and drakes have other endearing ways. The attachment they have for their owners, it seems, can be rather embarrassing. Once we had been away for the weekend, returning just as the people were coming out of church on Sunday

evening. The dog and the cat were both outside the gate waiting for us: that was not unnatural. But the ten ducks were also there and greeted us with quacks of joy. The hens wouldn't have cared if we had stayed away for ever, but the ducks had missed us. .. . Ducks lay early and often and say nothing about it. Hens make the welkin ring when they are about to lay, have laid, or see an egg that somebody else has laid. Every duck in the pen may plank down an egg and you won't hear a sound from any of them. It sometimes happens that you hear sounds of strife in a hen run and when you go to investigate, you find two infuriated females tearing out each other's feathers, then combs bleeding profusely. Nothing of that sort happens among ducks. They live happily together and never seem to be jealous, though a drake usually has a favourite wife.