Dick King-Smith's Book of Pets

by Dick King-Smith

  ‘East, west, water’s best,’ chorused the ducklings and away they swam.

  Frank worked his legs madly in an effort to follow his young friends, but his clawed feet simply could not propel him along, and fluttering his wings was little help and very tiring. If only I had feet like a duck, he thought, so that I could thrust with my feet like they do and push the water away behind me and go sailing along instead of just floating. If only those humans would realize that that’s what I need. They were clever enough to make me this wetsuit. Surely they could think of some way to make me webs?

  Jemima’s mother, Carrie, had been thinking. How could she design a pair of artificial webbed feet? She racked her brains for some way to do this, and then, by sheer chance, the answer came to her as she was cleaning the bathroom later that evening. She was wearing a pair of rubber gloves as she filled the wash basin and scoured it around. They were bright yellow, these gloves, and some combination of thoughts about yellow gloves and ducks’ feet and water gave her the idea. She could – she would – make a pair of artificial webbed feet out of the rubber gloves. I’ll put something inside the fingers and thumbs to stiffen them, she said to herself, to help Frank walk (or waddle, rather) on dry land. Then I’ll get a sheet of something solid – plywood, perhaps; no, plastic, that’ll be lighter – and I’ll cut out two pieces the shape of a duck’s foot and fix one inside each glove like a sort of inner sole. Then all we shall have to do is stick Frank’s feet inside and tape the cuff of each glove around his legs so that no water can get in and, hey presto! Frank will have webbed feet!

  Chapter Seven

  One of Jemima’s jobs about the farm was, in the evening, to shut up the hens and the ducks in their respective houses, to keep them safe from foxes. She left her mother working on the artificial webbed feet and went out into the orchard.

  Sleepy murmurs from the henhouse told her that the flock had already gone to bed, and automatically she bent to close the pop-hole when she thought, Oh, Frank! Is he inside? She opened the door of the henhouse. He wasn’t.

  She went to the duckhouse, outside which several ducks and the big white drake were still pottering about, preening and gabbling softly to one another.

  Jemima hooshed them into the house and looked inside, to see all the ducks and all the ducklings – but no Frank.

  Quickly she shut the duckhouse door and ran to the duckpond. There, still floating happily out in the middle, was Frank.

  When the ducks had begun to leave the pond and waddle away towards the duckhouse, Frank had been in no hurry to follow. He had become rather hot, wearing as he was a rubber suit over his plumage, and now floating on the nice cold water as the heat went out of the day and the sun sank was so refreshing.

  ‘You coming, chick?’ the ducklings called out as they swam past following their mother.

  ‘It’s time for beddy-byes.’

  ‘I think I’ll stay here for a bit,’ Frank replied. ‘I’m enjoying it.’

  ‘Please yourself,’ they said. ‘Let’s just hope that someone else doesn’t enjoy you.’

  ‘Who?’ asked Frank.

  ‘Mr Fox!’ cried the ducklings, and they scuttered off.

  For a while Frank continued to float about on the pond, trying to decide what to do. Surely I’ll be safe out in the middle here, he thought. Foxes can’t swim. Can they? Just then he heard his name called.

  ‘Frank!’ cried Jemima. ‘Come off the pond, you silly boy.’

  When he made no move, she found a long stick and waded in till the water was near the tops of her wellies and reached out and managed to hook Frank with the stick and pull him to shore. Jemima picked him up and carried him to the henhouse, but when she went to open the door, he kicked and struggled and squawked and shouted, ‘Frank!’ in an angry voice.

  So she took him to the duckhouse. As soon as she opened its door, he jumped out of her arms and rushed in.

  When she had closed the door, Jemima listened for a moment. Inside, the ducks were gabbling quietly and the ducklings peep-peeping – in a show of welcome, she thought.

  In reply her young cockerel said his name several times.

  Strange, Jemima thought. It’s beginning to sound more like ‘Quack!’ than ‘Frank!’

  ‘What d’you think of these then, Tom?’ said Carrie Tabb to her husband, holding out the results of her handiwork.

  The farmer picked one up and inspected it. ‘By golly, that’s a duck’s foot and a half,’ he said. ‘Grand pair of flippers they’ll make.’

  ‘More like galoshes really,’ said Jemima’s mother. ‘Don’t forget that Frank has to be able to walk in them as well as swim in them.’

  ‘When are you going to fit them on him?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning. Jemima can catch Frank when she lets the hens out.’

  ‘No, she can’t,’ said Jemima, coming in. ‘He wouldn’t go to bed with the hens, he’s in the duckhouse. Anyway, why must I catch him?’

  Her mother and father pointed – one with pride, one with amusement – at the strange pair of artificial webbed feet, bright yellow with five stiffened claws (that had been four fingers and a thumb) and, inside each rubber glove, a piece of stout plastic cut to the shape of a duck’s foot.

  ‘Oh, Mum, you are clever!’ Jemima said. ‘I can’t wait to see if they work properly.’

  ‘Well, wait till I’ve finished tomorrow morning’s milking,’ said her father. ‘This is something I don’t want to miss.’

  When, next day, the farmer came into the orchard, his wife and daughter were ready and waiting. They had fitted the new feet to Frank and taped the cuffs of the gloves securely around each leg. He looked a picture, with his brown head and wings and tail poking out of his green hot-water-bottle wetsuit and his yellow rubber-glove webs.

  Jemima put the young cockerel down on the grass. For a moment Frank stood still, puzzled by the strange things that had been put on his feet. Then he began to walk, lifting each foot high and then putting it down again flat on the ground, rather like a man in snowshoes. He tripped himself up once or twice due to the size of his new webs, but then he got more used to them and began to make his way towards the duckpond. He sploshed in the shallows and walked on in till he was floating.

  Jemima held her mother’s hand tightly. ‘Oh, Mum, it will work, won’t it?’ she said.

  ‘Fingers crossed,’ said her mother, and they all three crossed them.

  Then, as they watched, Frank began to make strong thrusts with his long legs, just the movements he would have made to run on dry land, and immediately he began to move forward, slowly at first, then faster, faster, till he was swimming around the pond at a speed no duck could hope to match. All the other ducks in fact got hastily out of the way lest they be rammed by this speeding water bird.

  ‘Wow!’ the ducklings cried as he whizzed by. ‘What a swimmer!’

  Farmer Tabb summed up the general amazement. ‘Cor lumme, luvaduck!’ he said.

  Chapter Eight

  Gertie and Mildred had gone back into the henhouse to lay their day’s eggs, and so knew nothing of Frank in all his finery.

  They were sitting in adjoining nest boxes, and Mildred – mindful of the rebuke she had recently received for speaking while Gertie was laying – kept her beak shut.

  Once Mildred had performed and gone out, Gertie laid her egg and then had a look at Mildred’s in the next box. It was, she was pleased to see, a white egg of rather a poor size. Badly bred, Mildred is, she said to herself with satisfaction. I always knew it. Suddenly, outside, she saw Mildred scuttling back at speed.

  ‘Quickly, dear,’ Mildred panted. ‘Come and have a look at your Frank!’

  ‘I want nothing more to do with the boy,’ said Gertie. ‘He’s nothing but an embarrassment to me.’

  ‘But you must come and look,’ said Mildred. ‘He’s really swimming!’

  Curiosity is a strong instinct, and Gertie could not resist making her way to the duckpond. At the furthest side of it, she saw, was her
son, sitting upon the water, quite still.

  ‘If you call that swimming, my dear Mildred,’ said Gertie in a very sarcastic voice, ‘you need your brains examining – if you’ve got any. Frank is simply floating as he has done before, thanks to that awful rubber suit.’

  Frank was in fact getting his breath back after a great number of high-speed circuits of the pond, but when he saw his mother on the opposite side, he shouted, ‘Mum! Watch this!’ and set off towards her as fast as his webs could drive him. Which was very fast. Up out of the water he surged and stood proudly before his mother in his wetsuit and new yellow footwear.

  ‘What d’you think, Mum?’ he said.

  For answer, Gertie gave a loud squawk of horror and ran hastily away. What had her son done now! Mildred ran away too, eager to tell the rest of the flock about this latest development.

  Frank turned sadly back towards the pond. Over its surface there still ran the waves caused by his recent rapid dash, and on them the ducklings bobbed.

  ‘Wow!’ they cried. ‘You’re the greatest!’

  ‘Greatest what?’ asked Frank.

  ‘Why, swimmer, of course,’ they said. ‘Fan-tastic!’

  Frank felt a glow of warmth. His mother didn’t want to have anything to do with him, nor did his brothers and sisters, nor the big cockerel, nor any of the hens in the flock. But these little ducklings – they were his friends.

  ‘I really can swim now, can’t I?’ he said.

  ‘And how!’ cried the ducklings.

  ‘Can I come for a swim with you all now?’ Frank asked.

  The ducklings looked at each other.

  ‘OK,’ one said.

  ‘On one condition,’ said another.

  ‘What?’ said Frank.

  ‘Take it a bit slow, chick.’

  ‘There’s no hurry.’

  ‘Nice and easy does it.’

  ‘You may like the high-speed stuff …’

  ‘… but we don’t.’

  ‘Oh, I see what you mean,’ Frank said. ‘If I’m dashing about, it makes the water rough so it’s not so nice for you. Is that it?’

  ‘You got it,’ they all said. ‘It’s enough to make us pondsick.’

  So Frank launched himself back into the water very carefully, and began to swim gently around the duckpond with slow measured thrusts of his big yellow webbed feet and the little yellow ducklings swam with him, like a flotilla of small boats escorting a big ship.

  Then the big white drake and all the other ducks, seeing how the ducklings were enjoying the company of the strange chicken, came out on to the water and swam along too, so that Frank found himself at the head of a great armada of ducks.

  At last, he thought happily, I am in my element!

  Chapter Nine

  It so happened that later that day one of Tom Tabb’s best cows was having difficulty in calving and so he sent for his brother the vet. Later, when the calf had been safely delivered – a heifer calf at that, which pleased the farmer – Ted Tabb asked how Jemima’s Frank was getting on.

  ‘You’ll be amazed,’ Tom said. ‘Carrie has made him artificial feet. I’ll just go and get a bowl of corn and we’ll go down to the duckpond and you’ll see.’

  By chance all the ducks and the ducklings too were pottering about in the orchard grass, so that the pond was empty of birds except for Frank.

  He had been trying to copy his friends, who were so good at putting their heads below the surface to pull up weeds or snap up wiggly things. If I’m going to be a proper duck, he told himself, I’ve got to be able to do that, and so he had been practising. But somehow he didn’t seem to have the knack of it. He could put his head under all right (though not very far – the wetsuit would not allow it), but he wasn’t too clever at holding his breath or keeping his beak closed so that the water got up his nostrils and down his throat. Altogether he was fed up and glad to see the two men approaching, one holding a bowl of corn and calling him by name.

  Frank went into overdrive. He whizzed across the surface of the pond so fast that he shot out of the water on to the bank, landing flat-footed on his big yellow webs.

  ‘What d’you think of that?’ asked the farmer.

  ‘Amazing!’ said the vet. ‘Look at those feet! What a rate he goes! Carrie’s a genius. But, Tom, what’s to become of this funny bird that is a chicken but wants to be a duck?’

  ‘Blessed if I know, Ted,’ said his brother. ‘I hope he doesn’t come to any harm, Jemima’s that proud of him. We’ll just have to wait and see.’

  So they waited, as the weeks and indeed the months went by, and they saw Frank grow and grow till he was almost the size of his father, the big red rooster. (Or rather, as big as his father had been, for one day, down at the far end of the orchard, he had met an old dog fox that had hidden itself in a nettle patch.) On Frank’s head now was a big floppy scarlet comb, while out of the back of the wetsuit there hung a fine plumy tail. His wings too had grown enormously so that now he could really scull with them to make his speedy progress on water even speedier.

  All this time Frank spent his nights in the duckhouse and his days on the duckpond, only coming ashore for food. Of his mother he saw practically nothing, for she kept well away from him, as indeed did his brothers and sisters and the rest of the flock. Sometimes this made Frank feel a little sad, for he was after all a chicken at heart. He had his friends, the ducks, but the older he got the more he began to realize that though he could swim like a duck – far better, in fact – he could never look like one.

  He would see his three brothers come strutting by and think how handsome they had grown with their fine feathers and their elegant sharp-clawed feet, in contrast to his clumsy green rubber suit and his awkward yellow rubber webs.

  A little later he noticed that there were only two of his brothers, and later still only one, and at last none. Where had they gone? Frank wondered. Little did he dream that they had made three plump Sunday dinners for the Tabb family.

  For a long time Frank had tried hard, too, to copy the sounds that all the ducks made – his first friends, the ducklings, were grown up now – but his ‘Quack!’ was really still only ‘Frank!’ But then, one fine morning, something quite unexpected happened to funny Frank …

  Jemima had let the hens out, and then had opened the duckhouse door, and all the ducks and the big white drake and Frank came out and made for the pond as usual.

  The waterfowl went straight on to the water but Frank, instead of following, jumped clumsily up on top of a big log that lay by the pond’s edge. He stood up on his toes (as best he could on his artificial feet, which was not very well), puffed out his chest (though this action, within the wetsuit, could not be seen), stretched out his (by now, very long) neck and, to the astonishment of the ducks, gave a loud, piercing ‘Cock-a-doodle-doo!’

  Chapter Ten

  ‘He crowed, did he?’ said Jemima’s father when she told him.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jemima. ‘That means he’s a proper grown-up cockerel now, doesn’t it, Dad?’

  The farmer looked thoughtful. ‘You know, Jemima,’ he said, ‘I think it’s time you thought this business through – I mean, about Frank wanting to be a duck. OK, he enjoys swimming in the pond, but it’s not natural. He should be running around with the rest of the flock, stretching his legs, preening his feathers, behaving like the chicken he is. He can’t do any of that while he’s dressed up in bits of an old hot-water bottle and a pair of rubber gloves.’

  ‘Well, what d’you think I should do, Dad?’ asked Jemima.

  ‘Nothing for the present. But I think we’ve got to give him something to tempt him out, something that will be more attractive to him than the ducks.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well,’ said Jemima’s father, ‘now that he’s a big boy, what he needs is a nice girlfriend. That’d really give him something to crow about. Tell you what, next market day, I’ll have a look around the poultry pens and see if I can find a pretty little pullet for y
our Frank.’

  Frank, too, was thinking of his future. As he watched the flock running helter-skelter across the orchard when Jemima came with food, as he saw them scratching about in the grass or taking a dust bath and then preening their feathers, he began increasingly to feel that he had become a prisoner of his own ambition. Because he had wanted to swim like a duck, was he to spend the rest of his life stuck inside his wetsuit so that he couldn’t preen or have a dust bath, with his feet confined in his artificial webs so that he couldn’t scratch and couldn’t run? He remembered how his late father, the big red rooster, had strutted noisily and proudly among his many brown wives. Was he, Frank, never to have a wife of his own?

  Over the next couple of days he found himself spending less time on the water and more on the land. At feeding times, he even tried talking to some of the flock, and went as far as saying, ‘Hello, Mum, how are you?’ to Gertie, but she did not answer.

  Jemima, meanwhile, was consulting her mother. She it was, after all, who had been to all the trouble of designing Frank’s swimming costume.

  ‘What d’you think, Mum?’ she said. ‘Should we take it off him? He doesn’t seem to want to swim as much as he used to.’

  ‘If we take it off him, he won’t be able to, will he?’