Karen's Ducklings

  “Spring Day,” he hissed.

  He was no help.

  “Since we have discovered Feather,” Ms. Colman went on, “I thought it might be fun to write about her and her babies. We can watch Feather every day. And we can take turns keeping a diary for her. We can write about what happens when she hatches her eggs, and when the ducklings start to grow up. We can take photos of Feather, too.” Ms. Colman glanced at me and then added quickly, “Through the windows, of course. And you can draw pictures of Feather. We can use the photos and pictures to illustrate our story. We will make a real book. When it is finished, we will take it to the library, and guess what. Mr. Counts will put it with the rest of the books, so other kids can check it out.”

  Mr. Counts is our librarian.

  I thought this idea was so, so cool. My classmates and I would be authors! We would write a book, and it would go in our library, and everybody could check it out and read it.

  We would be famous at Stoneybrook Academy.

  Nancy raised her hand. “May we start the book today?” she asked.

  “I think that is a very good idea,” Ms. Colman answered. “Who would like to write the first entry in Feather’s diary?”

  Every single kid in my class raised his or her hand.

  “My goodness,” said Ms. Colman. She closed her eyes. Then she pointed to a name in her roll book. She opened her eyes. “Natalie Springer,” she said. “Natalie, you may write about Feather today.”

  Ms. Colman gave Natalie a big piece of paper. Natalie wrote, “Today is Tuesday. Yistirday Karen Brear founded a mommy duck in the garden. Today the ducks name is Fither.” (Ms. Colman made Natalie correct that.) “Feather is siting on a nest she is going to hach her eggs.”

  That was the beginning of Feather’s Story.

  Bad News

  “Mommy, is the mail here?” I shouted. I ran into the little house after school on Monday afternoon.

  “Indoor voice, Karen,” Mommy reminded me.

  I wish grown-ups did not say that to me so often.

  Andrew ran out of the playroom. He met me in the hall. “Karen, the mail is late!” he announced. “Let’s go wait for it together. Maybe the car came.”

  “SHH!” I hissed.

  Andrew and I had not told Mommy or Seth about the cool car we had ordered. I was not sure why. I guess because the car was sort of supposed to be Seth’s Father’s Day present. So it should be a surprise.

  “The car is a surprise. Remember, Andrew?” I whispered.

  “Oh, yeah,” he whispered back.

  Andrew and I went outside. We sat on the front steps. I shaded my eyes and peered down the street.

  “No mail truck,” I said.

  “Boo,” said Andrew. “I want to play with that cool car.”

  “I thought the car was for Seth,” I said.

  “Oh. It is. But of course we will have to test it first,” said my brother.

  “Of course.”

  It was Andrew’s turn to look down the street. “There is the truck!” he yelled.

  Andrew and I jumped up. We ran to the mailbox. We waited for the truck to arrive. Soon it stopped in front of us. Its brakes squeaked.

  “Here is your mail,” said our letter carrier. She handed Andrew a stack of envelopes. “Oh, and one other thing,” she added.

  She handed me a box. Then she drove off.

  The box was for Lisa Engle. (That is Mommy.) It was from the Custom Car Company. “It’s the car!” I cried. “It came!”

  Andrew and I sat down in the middle of our yard. We tore open the box. Inside was a beautiful car, just like the one we had seen on TV.

  “And it is red!” exclaimed Andrew. “Okay. Let’s make it work.”

  “Wait. I think it needs batteries,” I said.

  “I will go get them!” Andrew grabbed the rest of the mail. He ran to the house with it. “I will not tell Mommy Seth’s present is here!” he called to me.

  While Andrew was inside, I looked through the box. I found a letter. This must tell us how to pay the two dollars, I thought. I opened the envelope. I pulled out the letter. At the top, it said, INVOICE. (I was not sure what that meant.) Underneath, it said, “Please pay the following: $20.00 — one Custom Car, plus $3.95 — shipping and handling.”

  YIKES! Andrew and I did not owe the car company two dollars. We owed them twenty dollars! Andrew must have read the ad wrong. Plus, we owed them the shipping and handling money.

  What were we going to do?

  I was still staring at the letter when Andrew ran back outside.

  “I got the batteries!” he said.

  In a flash, Andrew had put the batteries in the $23.95 car. He found the remote control. He set the car on the driveway.

  “Don’t you think we should read the directions?” I asked.

  “Nah,” Andrew answered. He pressed a button. The car shot up the driveway. It crashed into a fence post.

  It fell apart.

  “Oh, no!” I cried.

  Andrew and I fussed over the car for a very long time. We even read the directions. But we could not make the car work again. So we hid it in my closet. We hid the letter, too. “Do not tell Mommy or Seth about this,” I said to Andrew.

  “I won’t,” he promised.

  I felt awful.

  Sitting Around

  “Karen, today it is your turn to write about Feather for our book,” said Ms. Colman. “Remember to watch for her.”

  “Okay,” I replied.

  A week had gone by since Andrew and I had wrecked the cool car. Really, Andrew had wrecked it, but that was partly my fault. I should have read the instructions to him. But I had been too upset about the letter.

  I was still upset. The Custom Car Company was waiting for their $23.95. But Andrew and I did not have that much money.

  This was a GIGUNDO problem.

  While Ms. Colman took attendance, I looked out the windows. I looked at the bush where I knew Feather was hiding with her nest. I did not see anything. Nobody had seen very much. Feather was just sitting on the nest, keeping her eggs warm. If she got up to exercise or something, my friends and I did not see. Maybe Feather roamed around at night, when she was alone.

  Anyway, Feather’s Story was very boring so far.

  We tried to be nice about this. Yesterday, Jannie Gilbert had written about Feather. She had said, “Feather is buzy taking car of her eggs.”

  The day before that, Hank Reubens had written, “Feather is still sitting on her eggs. Keeping them worm. I think she is a good duck mother.”

  I felt bad about the cool car and the $23.95. But do you know what made me feel a little better? Spring. My two yards looked springier every day. And my classroom looked very springy.

  We had started working on our bulletin board. Across the top were letters that spelled SPRING IS HERE! Jannie and Pamela had cut out the letters. (At first they had lost the R’s. For awhile the letters spelled SPING IS HEE!) Under the letters were spring poems we had written. We had been working on poetry almost every day. I especially liked writing haikus. This was my spring haiku:

  Ms. Colman had chosen that haiku for the board.

  Across the bottom of the bulletin board were paper flowers we had made in art class. Each of us had made a different kind of flower. A zinnia, a marigold, a violet, a petunia, a lady’s slipper. I had made a daisy. (Actually I had made two. But I had ruined the first one. I had played “He loves me, he loves me not,” and torn off the petals.)

  A new spring thing was sitting on one of the windowsills. It was our terrarium. This is how a terrarium works. You take a glass bowl or a small aquarium and you put in some dirt and then you put in some nice damp moss and some other shade plants like little ferns and maybe some violets. You water the plants, then you cover your terrarium with a piece of glass and … it takes care of itself! The water collects on the glass top and “rains” back down on the plants. All you have to do is look at your terrarium and watch the plants grow.

  Oh
! Our other plants were growing, too. Our flower seeds were sprouting in their milk-carton gardens. They had not bloomed yet, but they looked green and pretty. Ms. Colman said the buds would come soon.

  I thought about Feather. I had not seen her that day. So I wrote, “Today Feather is just sitting around. Her eggs must be extra warm now.”

  Ms. Colman said, “I think Feather’s eggs will hatch soon.”

  I hoped she was right. I was tired of waiting.

  The Mysterious Bill

  “Glug, glug, glug,” said Andrew. He was pretending to chug his milk. When he put down his glass, I saw a milk mustache. “I am an old man,” said Andrew. “I have white whiskers. Oh, I am so old.”

  “Andrew, wipe your mouth. You are in the dining room,” I reminded him.

  At the little house (and also at the big house) we usually eat in the kitchen. But sometimes we eat in the dining room. In the dining room, we are supposed to be on our best, best behavior. Milk mustaches are not part of good behavior.

  It was dinnertime at the little house. Mommy and Andrew and Seth and I were eating salad and lasagna. Seth had gotten home late.

  “Anything interesting in the mail?” asked Seth.

  “Nope,” Andrew said.

  “The TV Guide,” I said.

  “A very strange letter,” Mommy said.

  “Ooh, a mystery!” I exclaimed. “What did the strange letter say, Mommy?”

  “A letter for you?” Seth asked Mommy.

  “Yes,” she answered. “It was addressed to Lisa Engle. And it was from the Custom Car Company in Indiana.”

  “The Custom Car Company?” Seth repeated.

  Uh-oh. I glanced at Andrew. Since he is only four, he did not understand that anything was wrong. Not yet, anyway.

  Mommy nodded. “A car company. The letter was from a Mr. Simpson. He says I owe him twenty-three dollars and ninety-five cents. For a car. Who ever heard of a car that costs only twenty-three ninety-five?”

  (Across the table, Andrew choked on his milk.)

  “Maybe Mr. Simpson meant twenty-three hundred ninety-five?” said Seth.

  “Maybe,” replied Mommy doubtfully.

  “No,” said Andrew. “He — ”

  I interrupted Andrew. I gave him a Look. “It must have been a mistake,” I said loudly. “Maybe you owe twenty-three ninety-five for a, um, jar.”

  “I have not ordered any jars,” said Mommy. “I suppose Mr. Simpson could have mailed the bill to the wrong Lisa Engle.”

  “That must be,” agreed Seth. “Don’t worry about the letter.”

  “I won’t,” said Mommy. “I have already thrown it away.”

  Whew. Well, that was good.

  Still, I felt … funny. I had gotten Mommy in trouble.

  When dinner was over, I pulled Andrew into my room. “We have to talk about the car,” I said to him.

  “The fool car?” (Andrew said “fool car” now instead of “cool car.”)

  “Yes, the fool car. I did not know the Custom Car Company would send another letter. And of course it was addressed to Mommy, so she opened it. I wonder if more letters will come.”

  “Maybe we should try to get the mail every day,” suggested Andrew.

  “We can’t. Sometimes it comes while we are at school. Or while we are at the big house.”

  “We could write a letter to Mr. Simpson.”

  “But what would we tell him?” I asked. “We broke his car.”

  “Yeah,” said Andrew. He stared at the floor.

  “This is a tragedy,” I said sadly.

  “Yeah,” Andrew said again, even though I am sure he did not know what that meant. “A tradegy.”

  “I think we have done something really wrong,” I added.

  Andrew’s eyes grew huge. “Will we have to go to jail?”

  “I am pretty sure the police do not put children in jail,” I said.

  I wished I were one hundred percent sure.

  Seven Duck Babies

  One morning we were working in our math workbooks. I was subtracting nines. That is hard for me. It is hard for Ricky, too. I looked over at him. He was working with his tongue poking out of his mouth.

  Our classroom was very quiet. Everyone was busy.

  Suddenly someone yelled, “Hey, lookit!”

  I jumped a mile. My pencil rolled off my desk.

  “Nancy!” exclaimed Ms. Colman.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Nancy, “but — ”

  “You scared me,” I announced.

  “I said I was sorry,” said Nancy.

  Everyone turned around to look at Nancy. She almost never yells.

  “Is something wrong?” asked Ms. Colman.

  Nancy grinned. “Nope.” She pointed out one of the windows. “I think something is happening at Feather’s nest. The bushes keep moving.”

  “The babies!” Natalie cried.

  “The ducklings!” I cried.

  Even Ms. Colman got excited. “The eggs!” she cried. She dashed to the windows and looked outside. “I think Feather is hatching her eggs.”

  We are not supposed to leave our desks. Not in the middle of math-workbook time. And especially not without asking first. Even so, every kid in my class — including me — flew to the windows. We leaned over the sills and stared outside. We were very crowded. This girl named Audrey tried to shove in front of me.

  “Hey!” I exclaimed.

  “Move over!” said Audrey. “I want to see.”

  “Well, so do I.”

  But there was not much to see. Feather stayed in the bushes.

  “All right, class,” said Ms. Colman. “Let’s take our seats.”

  We sat down again. But all during the day, we kept looking out the windows. Even Ms. Colman did. Once, I was able to see in the bushes.

  “There are the babies!” I shrieked. “I saw some babies.”

  After lunch, one of the teachers and a man from SAPA went into the courtyard. They looked at Feather’s nest. They were careful not to touch anything and to be very quiet. When they came back inside, the man said, “Your duck has hatched seven eggs. The ducklings seem to be fine. You will probably see them sometime tomorrow. Today they are resting and drying off. Tomorrow they will start to walk around.”

  “Gosh,” I said to Hannie. “Duck babies sure learn how to walk fast. People babies cannot walk when they are just one day old.”

  “I know,” said Hannie. “Oh, boy. Tomorrow is going to be exciting. We will see the ducklings for real.”

  “I wonder how fast ducklings grow up,” I said. “And I wonder who will take the babies. Maybe they will go to a farm together. Or maybe they will go to seven different homes, even though that would be sad.”

  “Karen — ” Hannie started to say. She was frowning.

  But Ms. Colman began to talk then, too. “Someone has a very important job today,” she said. “Who is supposed to add to Feather’s Story?”

  “Oh, I am!” exclaimed Bobby. And he wrote, “Today Feather hathed her babies!!! She had seven ducklings!! The man said they look helthy. We have not seen them much but we might see them tomoroe. They can alredy walk. I think they are smart. I do not know if they are cute.”

  We will know tomorrow, I thought. I could not wait to see the ducklings waddling around the courtyard. I wondered if they would come near the windows so we could see them up close. I hoped they were not going to be as shy as their mother was.

  Make Way for Ducklings

  “Look! They are so cute!”

  “They’re fuzzy!”

  “They are so little!”

  It was the next day. I had reached school early. Even Ms. Colman had not arrived yet. I was standing at the windows with Nancy, Leslie, Tammy and Terri (they are twins), Ricky, Jannie, and Hank.

  Guess what we were looking at.

  The ducklings!

  Feather had brought them out from under the bushes. She was leading them all through the courtyard. They followed her in a line.

&nbsp
; “She is showing them around,” said Ricky.

  “No, I think she is showing them off,” I said.

  The ducklings really were pretty cute. They were small and fuzzy. They followed Feather wherever she went. They walked and waddled and hopped. I could not believe that just a day earlier they had still been inside their eggs. They looked as if they had been waddling around the garden for years.

  “You know what?” said Tammy. “We gave Feather a name, so we should give the ducklings names, too.”

  “Should we have another contest?” asked Hank.

  “Maybe,” said Tammy. “Or we could just name them ourselves.”

  “But they look exactly alike,” said Terri. “We cannot tell them apart.”

  “So?” said Jannie.

  “Yeah, that doesn’t matter,” I agreed. “Let’s think of seven duckling names.”

  “How about Happy, Dopey, Grumpy, Sleepy, Sneezy, Doc, and Bashful?” suggested Leslie. She looked pleased with herself.

  “But they were seven dwarfs,” I pointed out. “We have seven ducks.”

  “Well,” began Ricky, “we could call them Daffy, Donald, Huey, Dewey … and … hmm, I cannot think of three more duck names.”

  “I can!” I cried. “How about the names of Mrs. Mallard’s babies in Make Way for Ducklings? I think she had eight babies. We could use seven of those names.”

  We found a copy of Make Way for Ducklings. I turned to the part where Mrs. Mallard names her babies. “Here it is,” I said. “She named them Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Oack, Pack, and Quack. We could use the first seven names. What do you think?”

  Everyone liked the idea. When Ms. Colman arrived, she liked it, too.

  For awhile that morning, Ms. Colman and my classmates and I stood at the windows and watched Feather and her babies. We could see other kids in other windows watching, too. Feather had a big audience.

  That day it was Hannie’s turn to write in Feather’s Story. Of course, she wrote about the ducklings and what they were doing. “The babies waddle around just like there mother. They followe her. The ducklings are fuzzy. They do not have feathers like Feather yet.”