Word Count:
945 Rating:
PG. Category:
Humor. Fluff.
Story Status:
Complete Summary: Jim,
Blair and a female duck...!
Beta:
Thank you to Jayne Perry for the beta-reading.
A Bird in the Nest By Leesa Perrie
Jim came down from his bedroom, to see Blair standing on the balcony,
looking towards…the planter that they’d put there
last
spring and filled with low growing plants.
“Hey, Chief, what are you looking at?”
“Hmm, oh Jim, you’ll never guess what’s
in our planter. It’s really cool!”
Jim walked onto the balcony, following Blair’s eye to
a….a
nest! Not only a nest, but a nest with a….duck on
it! A female mallard duck!
“What does it think it’s doing?” Jim
exclaimed.
“Well, duh, I think she thinks she’s
nesting,” Blair
replied with a grin. “Isn’t it cool?
We’ll get
to see the ducklings, maybe even get to see some of them hatch if
we’re really lucky. It’ll be
great.”
“Yeah, great,” Jim answered, unenthusiastically.
“And
how will the ducklings get down from here without plummeting to their
deaths? And what about the noise? It’s
gonna drive me
nuts!”
“Oh, come one Jim. You can use your earplugs and
the white noise generator to block out the ducklings.”
“That still doesn’t answer how they are going to
get down from here.”
“Well, we’ll just have to lower them down in a
basket or
something. Then one of us will follow them to the water to
make
sure they don’t end up as road kill or eaten by a
cat.”
“What? Are you serious?!” Jim asked
incredulously.
“We’ll lower them in a basket and then trail after
them
through the streets!! No way, Sandburg. No way am I doing
that!”
“Fine, I’ll follow them through the streets and
I’ll
ask Henri and Rafe to help with lowering them down to the ground
– I reckon they’ll be willing to help
out.”
“I still don’t like the idea of her nesting where
she is.”
“But it is safe from cats and other predators, well except
perhaps from birds of prey, and even then, they’re unlikely
to
get this close to the buildings. And what do you think we can
do
about it? She’s already laid her eggs, I saw them
when she
rearranged them earlier. We can’t remove her and
her eggs
now, that would be cruel.”
Jim sighed. He knew he’d lost the argument.
“Okay, she can stay. I guess I’ll
survive. It’s only for a few weeks, after all, I
suppose.”
Birds: Going Down By Leesa Perrie (with help from Jayne
Perry)
About 28 days later, the ducklings had all hatched and the mother duck
was obviously wanting them to follow her to the local park.
So
Blair called Henri and Rafe over, and together they managed to rig a
basket and rope affair that wouldn’t harm the precious cargo
inside it. Unbeknownst to them, a neighbour had seen what
they
were doing and had called the local TV station. The first
they
knew of it was when a news crew turned up outside the loft and started
filming the ‘lowering of the ducklings’.
Once they were lowered successfully, Blair was interviewed by the news
crew and explained how the mother duck had nested on the balcony and
that they couldn’t bear to move her and end up destroying the
eggs.
The three of them then followed the line of ducklings, who were
following their mother, along the street. Henri stopped the
traffic as the procession crossed. One of the news reporters
was
heard to mutter that he now knew why the duck crossed the
road.
To get to the other side, of course.
The procession of mother duck, nine ducklings, three
‘mother’s helpers’ and the TV news crew
slowly wound
its way over a couple more streets – with Henri and Rafe
taking
turns at stopping the traffic where necessary, and eventually they
reached the local park and the pond.
Watching the mother duck persuading the somewhat dubious ducklings to
get into the water kept everyone entertained for a while, but
eventually all nine ducklings were swimming along behind their
mum. Job done. Success. And a nice filler for the
local
evening news.
The next day, Henri and Rafe entered the bullpen to find their desks
covered in duck paraphernalia, and when Blair walked in later, he was
treated to duck calls from everyone present, and was also bombarded
with toy ducks. Blair noticed that Jim’s shout of
‘duck!’ came suspiciously too late to help him.
Simon then gave the three ‘heroes’ a speech, which
included
many bad duck puns and several duck jokes. He also gave them
a
fake medal each, which was actually a duck-shaped soap on a rope, and
everyone enjoyed a piece of cake – cut from a duck shaped
cake,
of course.
Jim was just glad that the noisy ducklings and mother duck were gone,
and that he could finally clear the mess up that they had left in his
planter and all over his balcony. At least it was over; no
more
ducks, no more ducklings, no more noise, no more smell and no more
mess. Good
riddance,
he thought. Though secretly it hadn’t been as bad as he had
feared, and the family had been kinda cute, but he wasn’t
going
to admit that to anyone. Especially not Sandburg.
And the Bird Came Back… By Leesa Perrie
It was a nice warm and sunny spring day, and Jim got out of bed feeling
refreshed and ready for anything. He smiled, looking forward
a
day off from work. Maybe he’d go down to the park
and feed
the ducks – their ducks, as Sandburg called them.
He came downstairs to see Blair standing on the balcony, looking
towards…the planter. No, oh no, please, not again,
he thought, a feeling of deja vu washing over him.
“Hey Jim,” Blair called, “Guess
who’s back?”
The End
Author's Notes:
Non-Sentinel photos from a Royalty-free site
