| SAILOR, DUCK!!! |
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| Sailor here. Sheep. I love sheep. I love the way they smell and the way they bleat. I love the way they feel, all squishy when I run into them. I love the way they trot away from me and I love the way they tend to flock together. I love sheep. Mom says that in actuality, it�s birds of a feather that flock together and this morning she set off in the dog car to show me what she meant. We drove a million carsick miles to the ocean side of our foothills and pulled into a gas station. �Mom,� I burped politely from my crate in the back of the Volvo. �Couldn�t we have just gone to the gas station near our house? My tummy hurts.� Mom laughed. �I�ve got a surprise for you. Hang in there, goof-ball.� I lay down again and closed my eyes. When the road finally straightened out, so did my tummy, my drool dried on my ruff, and I began to smell sheep. I whined in anticipation. We came to a post office and a gas station, turned down a small road, and drove another million miles to the sheep corrals. I was in seventh heaven. Sheep! �Sailor,� Mom said, �Today we are going to herd ducks.� Ducks? What are ducks? They smell like birds, swear like sailors (yeah, I know), slap their webby feet on the ground, and shake their booties in my face. Yuck! I discovered that I am not fond of ducks. They do not flock together, no matter what anybody says about their feathers. When I tried to gather them up, they just stood there and swore at me. I walked slowly to begin driving them, and they didn�t move. They quacked and looked ate me, first from one side of their puffy little heads, then from the other. When I finally got them moving, they didn�t run to Mom for protection, shouting, �Wolf! Wolf!� like sheep are wont to do. No, they ran around and tried to find their way back to the barn. Bother. I learned that if I came too close or moved too fast, these pesky ducks went every which way, some heading north and others heading east. I tried to gather them up, but they were not very cooperative. Again and again, the flock (a misnomer if I�ve ever heard of one) split itself into noisy individuals and waddled around calling me names that just aren�t appropriate for an upstanding herding dog�s ears. I just didn�t get it and they were not helping me out in the least. Mom then took me in hand and made me move slowly from farther away than I thought was proper. She must have said something to the ducks, too, because they suddenly stopped flapping their feet and settled down into the semblance of a group, waddling away from the both of us. I got between Mom and the ducks and smiled suddenly as I realized that I was actually driving them. They never shut their beaks, though, and talked to each other and to me throughout the whole ordeal. So there we were, all of us together, finally ambling along the fence line when disaster struck. As we came over a small rise, one puffy-headed Rogue Duck caught his webby little toes on a tuft of grass and tripped. As he rolled over in the mud trying in vain to get back on an even keel, his keel bone struck a small stick and he did a sudden Full Twisting Sukahara right under my aristocratic nose. Yikes! I was forced to leap into the air to avoid stamping him out altogether and did my own version of this most impressive gymnastics feat. Dramatically, decidedly, and irrevocably did I split the flock. What a mess. The Rogue Duck picked himself up, yelling terrible epithets at me. Mom laughed so hard I thought she was going to join the Rogue in the mud. All the other ducks started flapping and running and quacking around Mom and me. The Rogue Duck thereafter refused mightily all my attempts to force him back to the safety of his own kind. He wouldn�t flock. He ran around until he found a soft spot near the water trough and sat down, shaking his tail feathers in rebellion. By this time, the rest of the ducks had decided that they were not going to meet with such an ignominious fate and settled down to watch how I was going to cope with this one really detestable duck. Keeping an eye on them, I barked at the Rogue to get him on his disgusting yellow feet. He just sat there. I moved closer and barked louder. Finally he stood. �Okay,� I thought, �This is going to be okay.� (to be continued) |
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